Journalistic speculation about the 1980 presidential election seems to suggest that conservative religious groups might have played a significant role in the startling victory of Ronald Reagan and the Republican party. This research project takes such speculation as a point of departure in an attempt to answer a whole series of questions concerning the long neglected relationshp between religion and voting behavior in the American context. Religion is seen as a central belief system which has the capacity to affect presidential voting behavior by first affecting political attitudes towards many of the important policy issues of the day. / Along the way a denominational measure is developed and shown to be a meaningful predictor of three separate dimensions of religious belief. This denominational measure is shown to have been significantly related to presidential voting behavior in three of the last six elections, those of 1960, 1968 and 1972. Evidence is gathered to suggest that religious belief affected the latter two elections through the medium of issue attitudes. Specifically, religious beliefs seemed to have had an impact on the formation of attitudes towards civil rights and the new moral issues such as abortion and women's rights. / Finally, an attempt is made to assess the impact of elite and mass level changes on the strength of the religion factor. Evidence is presented to show that the presidential nominees themselves are an important variable in determining whether or not religion will play a significant role in affecting an election outcome. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 43-06, Section: A, page: 2081. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1982.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_74844 |
| Contributors | LOPATTO, PAUL JAMES., Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text |
| Format | 267 p. |
| Rights | On campus use only. |
| Relation | Dissertation Abstracts International |
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