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By Hao Li: Subscribe to Hao's RSS feed
January 9, 2012 6:37 PM EST
Those who dismiss Ron Paul's 2012 Republican nomination campaign are overlooking a crucial group that make up nearly half of the Republican base: evangelical Christians.
That is, if Paul can win over the evangelical vote, it is entirely plausible that he will beat Mitt Romney for the nomination.
In 2008, ABC polling director Gary Langer estimated that evangelicals make up 44 percent of Republican primary voters. In 11 of the 29 states for which exit polls were conducted, they represented the majority.
In the general election, evangelicals make up about 26 percent of voters.
Evangelical voters prefer overtly Christian candidates who are social conservatives on issues like gay marriage and abortion.
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But they are often forced to consider other types of candidates as campaigns winnow the field because evangelical candidates, like Mike Huckabee, tend to not go very far nowadays.
Relevant analysis of the impact of evangelical voters, therefore, mostly centers on which non-evangelical candidate they will tolerate.
The 2012 Republican nomination will likely come down to Romney and Paul; they are the only two candidates with sufficient campaign funds and a credible national strategy.
Romney currently holds a noticeable lead over Paul, but their two-man contest does not include evangelicals, who have so far backed evangelical (or Christian, at least) candidates like Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum.
When these candidates fade away, how many evangelicals support Paul over Romney may very well decide the contest.
In 2008, Romney had trouble with evangelical voters. In the 2012 Iowa caucuses, he only captured 14 percent of evangelical votes compared to Paul's 18 percent.
To be blunt, evangelicals do not like Romney because he is Mormon. About half of evangelicals do not think Mormonism is a Christian faith. A 2011 Gallup poll showed that 22 percent of the general American public will not vote for a Mormon.
Being Mormon is tough enough, but Romney is also penalized by the related problem that he cannot use religion to his benefit.
In Republican nomination races, an easy way to score points with voters is to talk about one's "personal relationship with Jesus Christ." Romney cannot do that because his strategy is to avoid the topic of religion altogether.
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