ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the political alignment and voting behavior of major American religious traditions in 1992. We discover that evangelical Protestants solidified their growing Republican proclivities of recent decades, becoming a core voting bloc within the GOP coalition. When superimposed on the widening gulf between evangelical Protestants and seculars, these trends suggest that a new kind of party alignment is emerging: a division between religious and nonreligious voters from all traditions, replacing the old ethno-religious politics based on disputes between religious traditions. The 1992 election indeed resulted in significant changes in the religious traditions that have been the backbone of party coalitions for most of American history. The chapter looks at the National Survey of Religion and Politics conducted at the University of Akron during the spring of 1992 to establish a baseline on the eve of the campaign.
