God Talk

• DOI: 10.1177/1065912908319605
• Published date: 01 June 2009
• Date: 01 June 2009
• Author: Brian Robert Calfano,Paul A. Djupe
• Subject Matter: Articles

Political Research Quarterly

Volume 62 Number 2

June 2009 329-339

© 2009 University of Utah

10.1177/1065912908319605

http://prq.sagepub.com

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http://online.sagepub.com

329

God Talk

Religious Cues and Electoral Support

Brian Robert Calfano

Missouri State University, Springfield

Paul A. Djupe

Denison University, Granville, Ohio

It was revealed in 2006 that Republican candidates employ a type of religious code in their political speeches. Their

intention is to cue the support of religiously conservative voters without alienating other voters who may not share

the same social issue agenda. The authors assess the efficacy of this GOP Code on the support of voters in specific

religious traditions in an experimental setting. As expected, the code proves to be an effective cue for white evangel-

ical Protestants but has no effect on mainline Protestants and Catholics. The form and function of the code expands

our understanding of religious influence and broadens the spectrum of cues the electorate uses.

Keywords: heuristics; shared social identity; party candidates; religion; Republican code

Acursory look at the national political campaigns

of the past thirty-five years suggests that

Republicans are skilled at using religiously laden

appeals to woo certain voters. Nixon’s Southern

Strategy, Lee Atwater’s masterminding of the Reagan

landslides, and Karl Rove’s present-day efforts sug-

gest that GOP candidates have achieved tremendous

success by turning elections into referenda on their

opponents’ morality (Leege et al. 2002). In his book

Tempting Faith, former White House staffer David

Kuo (2006) revealed that Republicans use highly

selective cues to appeal to religious conservatives.

These cues, or what we term “the code,” signal the in-

group status of a GOP candidate to white evangelical

voters. However, because the cues are so specific to

evangelical culture, they are intended to pass unno-

ticed by other voters and therefore allow GOP candi-

dates to avoid broadcasting very conservative issue

positions that might alienate more moderate voters.

Thus, the code is a highly sophisticated communica-

tion strategy that is designed to appeal to an in-group

without rousing an out-group’s suspicions.

Linking politics and morality often requires appeals

to (1) religion, because Americans are such an excep-

tionally religious people, and (2) religious groups,

which are important organizational nodes for the elec-

torate. We believe that both aspects of religion—its

social and psychological aspects—are important,

although the religion and politics literature has been

less than concrete about how each matters in terms of

candidate choice (Regnerus, Sikkink, and Smith

1999). Although each perspective suggests that a

theory incorporating both the social and psychological

aspects would be particularly salutary, little progress

has been made. For instance, while almost every study

of Christian Right support notes that links between

individuals and the movement are made through grass-

roots mechanisms, that is, churches (e.g., Wilcox and

Larson 2006), most studies focus their measurement

strategies on individual identifications (Jelen 1993;

Wilcox 1989; Wilcox, Jelen, and Leege 1993).

Alternately, the religious commitment perspective uses

religious traditions, such as evangelical Protestant or

Catholic, as an operationalization of a common set of

political information conveyed to members (Green

et al. 1996), an assumption that Djupe and Gilbert

(2004) demolished with their demonstration of the

tremendous diversity within those categories.

Still, there is value in thinking about religious influ-

ence from a perspective that takes religious traditions

seriously and explains how religious identifications

Brian Robert Calfano, Assistant Professor of Political

Science, Missouri State University; e-mail: briancalfano@

missouristate.edu.

Paul A. Djupe, Associate Professor of Political Science, Denison

University; e-mail: djupe@denison.edu.

Authors’Note: A previous version of this article was presented at

the 2007 annual meeting of the Midwest Political Science

Association, Chicago, April 12-15. The authors wish to thank

David Peterson, Nehemia Geva, Greg Gwiasda, and David Barker

for their helpful comments on earlier conceptions of this project.