I’ve already pointed out how ridiculous David Barton’s election analysis has been, but since he keeps spewing his nonsense, I guess I’ll just have to keep point it out.
New findings show that the 2010 midterm elections saw the highest Christian voter turnout ever.
“We had a very high Christian voter turnout two years ago, but they did not bring their values with them,” explains David Barton, founder and president of WallBuilders, which is an organization that supports the moral, religious and constitutional foundation on which America was built.
He says only one percent of voters considered marriage to be an issue in 2008, but that statistic reached 53 percent this year. Moreover, only six percent of voters thought abortion was an issue in 2009, but that margin jumped to 30 percent by last month’s elections.
“You [clearly] have Christians showing up. Not only did they show up this time, they actually brought their values with them,” Barton notes. “And not only did they bring their values, they voted their values.”
Really? In 2008, anti-gay marriage amendments passed in California, Arizona, and Florida … but Barton wants us to believe that only “one percent of voters considered marriage to be an issue”?
Please.
What post-election surveys show is that only one percent thought marriage was the most important issue, which is obviously a completely different finding.
But then Barton goes on to comapre that one percent figure to exit polls from 2010 showing that 53% of respondents answered “No” to the question “Should Same-Sex Marriages Be Legally Recognized?” as if that was an accurate comparison.
Similarly, only nine percent considered abortion to be the most important issue in 2008 but Barton compares that to a poll showing that “thirty percent of voters said that abortion ‘affected’ their vote,” despite the fact that considering something “the most important issue” and stating that it to “affected” one’s vote are completely different things.
One percent thought marriage was the most important issue in 2008 while nine percent thought abortion was the most important issue – but Barton baselessly compares those figures to completely unrelated figures from 2010 in an effort to make it look like the electorate suddenly cares primarily about his Religious Right agend.
