ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at the role played by religion and family values in the 1992 election. It assesses both the blend and the amount of separate impact in presidential voting the various components of the New Christian Right have had in the last four elections. Any empirical demonstration of the effect on presidential voting of either religious conservatism or family values conservatism must therefore show the independent effect of either or both of these factors — over and beyond the effect of conservatism generally. In the late twentieth century in the United States, a number of components are believed to comprise a conservative ideology — with which the New Christian Right is often identified — even if different people emphasize different components. In 1992 the religion issue and the morality issue “stood out” as the dominant components in whatever impact conservative ideology had over and beyond party identification in influencing the presidential vote.
