The Election of the Evangelical

From where we stand now, the election of 1976 can look like an alternate reality: southern white evangelicals united with African Americans, northern Catholics, and Jews in support of a Democratic presidential candidate; the Republican candidate, a social moderate whose wife proudly proclaimed her support for Roe v. Wade , was able to win over Great Plains farmers as well as cultural liberals in Oregon, California, Connecticut, and New Jersey—even as he lost Ohio, Texas, and nearly the entire So