Obama cut into GOP's religious base in win

In building a winning coalition of religious voters, Barack Obama cut into the so-called "God gap" that puts frequent worshippers in the Republican column, won Catholics, made inroads with younger evangelicals and racked up huge numbers with minorities and people with no religious affiliation.

By some measures, the faith-based equivalent of the red and blue map didn't change that much: Large voting blocs like white Catholics and evangelical Protestants remained in the Republican camp, for example.

The early indications from exit polls don't suggest a fundamental reshaping of religion's role in electing presidents, but they do show Obama made progress on important fronts that hold promise for future Democratic religious coalitions that cross racial lines, analysts said.

"It really doesn't look to me like a realignment," said John Green, a senior fellow at the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. Rather, he said, Obama made religion work for him in a way other Democrats haven't.

The economy, meanwhile, dominated voters' priorities across religious lines, blunting the impact of issues like abortion and gay marriage that historically help move religious votes.

The Obama campaign made a strong pitch for religious voters, building grassroots support through "faith house parties" where religion and the candidates were discussed, putting Catholic and evangelical surrogates on the stump, and holding faith caucus meetings at the Democratic convention in August. Yet when it came down to the final Sunday, the campaign turned to traditional Democratic religious turf: African-American churches, where a letter from the candidate was read urging voter participation.

Exit polls showed Obama winning nearly all black Protestants, and a strong majority of both Catholic and Protestant Hispanics. Obama won the election handily even though white Catholics and white Protestants backed Republican John McCain.

"This is a coalition that includes white Christians," Green said of Obama's faith-based bloc. "It's just white Christians aren't the senior partners in this coalition."

On one key measure that has hurt Democrats before — the God or religion gap — Obama made up ground. He won a slightly larger share of weekly churchgoers than John Kerry did in 2004.

White evangelicals remain a key component of the Republican coalition. And exit polls show they made up nearly a quarter of the electorate, a little higher than in 2004.