According to a post-election survey conducted by Public Opinion
Strategies for the Faith and Freedom Coalition, the largest single
constituency in the electorate in the 2010 midterm elections was
self-identified evangelicals, who comprised 29% of the vote and cast an
astonishing 78% of their ballots for Republican candidates.
The turnout by conservative people of faith represented a 5 percent
increase in evangelical turnout over 2006—enough to eliminate
Democratic gains in that year—and was the largest ever recorded in a
midterm election. Because the evangelical vote is concentrated in the
South and the Midwest, these voters had an exaggerated impact on
yesterday’s GOP gains, contributing to the vast majority of U.S. Senate
and House victories by Republican candidates.
The survey also found that 52% of all self-identified members of the
Tea Party movement are conservative evangelicals. This is consistent
with polling data by other organizations conducted before
Election Day.
Evangelicals were joined by frequently-church-attending Roman Catholic voters, who constituted 12 percent of the vote and cast 58 percent of their ballots for Republican candidates, as opposed to 40 percent of their ballots for Democrats, according to CNN exit polling.
“People of faith turned out in the highest numbers in a midterm
election we have ever seen, and they made an invaluable contribution to
the historic results, including the election of a Republican
majority in the House and significant gains in U.S. Senate seats,
governorships, and hundreds of state legislative seats and local
offices,” said Ralph Reed, founder and chairman of the Faith and
Freedom Coalition. “This survey, along with numerous exit polls, makes
clear that those who ignore or disregard social conservative voters and
their issues do so at their own peril.”
The Faith and Freedom Coalition made a total of 58.8 million voter contacts to social and fiscal conservative voters in 2010, including 16 million voter guides, 8 million pieces of mail, and 15 million GOTV calls. FFC has 400,000 members and supporters and chapters operating in 24 states.