Democratic candidates score big with clergy, religious organizations

When it comes to campaign contributions, the 2008 presidential campaign keeps turning the conventional wisdom on its ear.

The political establishment assumes that two reliable allies of conservative Republican candidates are U.S. troops and American clergy. On the prior, we learned earlier in the fall that military donations are going heavily towards Barack Obama and Ron Paul, both of whom are staunch opponents of the president’s policy in Iraq.

And on the latter, clergy seem to be defying the conventional wisdom as well.

Clergy and religious organizations contribute to political candidates, just like investment bankers or teachers or any other group. That clergy give doesn’t surprise, but how they’re giving does. […] Thus far in the ’08 cycle, 56 percent of religious groups’ and leaders’ donations have gone to Democrats, and 43 percent to Republicans, compared with 52/47 in favor of Republicans in ’06 and 51/49 in favor of Democrats (!) in 2004. […] You can only read so much into these numbers. After all, in the aggregate religious groups have backed the losers of the last two elections. But the partisan gap in contributions is wider now than it’s been since 1992.

In three of the last four cycles, clergy have backed Republicans in greater numbers than Democrats. The lone exception, 2004, was practically even.

But this year, clergy contributions are going to the Dems by a wide margin — according to the data from the Center for Responsive Politics, 56% is the strongest percentage Dems have had with clergy donations in two decades.



As for the specific candidates receiving checks from the clergy, the race isn’t even close:

1. Barack Obama: $110,000

2. Mitt Romney: $39,000

3. Mike Huckabee: $23,000

Obviously, as the figures show, clergy aren’t going to compete with oil company executives any time soon when it comes to bundling and/or hosting lucrative fundraisers.

But who would have thought that a Democratic candidate would have raised almost triple the leading Republican when it comes to money from pastors?

The conventional wisdom is that the faithful overwhelmingly prefer Republicans to Dems. And yet, there’s ample evidence to the contrary.