Cueing God: Religious Cues and Voter Support

Abstract

Scholars contend that correctly applying religious cues is crucial to winning political elections. This article examines the effect of general religious cues by conducting an experiment on a national sample (N = 520). Through the use of a fictitious congressional candidate's webpage, we examine how subtle and overt religious cues interact with citizen religiosity to affect political evaluations. The findings demonstrate that politicians who use overt religious cues run the risk of alienating a large portion of potential voters. Religious cues do, however, appear to become more effective as citizens become more religious. We also find some evidence that overt religious cues are more polarizing than subtle religious cues. This article provides a foundation from which to more thoroughly consider how general religious cues can affect political outcomes and how these cues may interact with other factors.

Survey Experiments on Candidate Religiosity, Political Attitudes, and Vote Choice

“…While scholars have recognized the growing importance of religious commitment (Hunter ; Smidt, Kellstedt, and Guth ; Wuthnow ) and the increasing degree to which candidates cue their level of religiosity (Domke and Coe ; Shogan ), until recently it has remained unclear precisely how voters use this information in evaluating candidates. McLaughlin and Wise () take an important first step by demonstrating that candidates’ religious cues exert a direct effect on citizen support. However, ours is the first work to assess how candidate religiosity and secularism condition the electoral impact of political factors such as partisanship and policy attitudes.…”

“…Research is just beginning to explore how candidates’ religiosity and secularism influences voters. In addition to Djupe and Calfano's () assessment of voter reactions to atheist candidates, McLaughlin and Wise () show that highly committed candidates attract support from highly religious voters but repel less committed members of the electorate. Similarly, Weber and Thornton () show that candidates’ religious cues can prime religious traditionalism, especially in low information environments.…”

“…Thus understood, we expect candidate religiosity to condition the electoral impact of voters’ religious commitment, party identification, and attitudes on cultural policy issues. First, as McLaughlin and Wise () show, candidates with higher levels of religiosity should attract more religious voters, while secular candidates should appeal more to less religious voters.…”

“…As a result of the religious restructuring of the parties, citizens have come to associate highly religious people with the GOP and less religious and secular people with the Democrats (Campbell, Green, and Layman ). Thus, when candidates portray themselves as highly religious, electoral support should increase from Republican identifiers and decrease among Democrats above and beyond the tendency of more religious voters to be Republicans and more secular voters to be Democrats (McLaughlin and Wise ). By the same logic, secular candidates should be more attractive to Democratic identifiers and less appealing to Republicans.…”

In Media We Distrust

“…Domke and Coe (2008) assert that modern politicians have increasingly relied on religious cues as a means of securing votes. This strategy, however, has been known to backfire (McLaughlin & Wise, 2014). Domke and Coe (2008) refer to the ''calculated, deliberate, and partisan use of faith'' as the ''God Strategy'' (p. 7).…”