The Effects of Political and Demographic Variables on Christian Coalition Scores :: Christianity Christian Religion Essays Research

The Effects of Political and Demographic Variables on Christian alinement ScoresOne of the most interesting phenomena in American politics is the recent rise of the Christian right. First termed the clean-living bulk by Jerry Falwell in the late 1970s, the Christian Right has undergone a fall upon and a leader change. The Christian nuclear fusion is currently led by Pat Robertson who seeks to continue much of the early work pioneered by the Moral Majority. The Moral Majority sought to reintroduce Christian principles into the governmental sphere. The Christian Coalition focuses on continuing these efforts in an attempt to reverse the moralistic decay that threatens our great nation (Christian Coalition, 1996). The purpose of this research is to measure the political and demographic variables on House models frequency of voting with the Christian Coalition agenda. This is measured by the Christian Coalitions Congressional Scorecard as the helping a representative supports the p osition held by the Coalition. The individual variables used in this research include party affiliation of the representative, how the territorial dominion voted in the 1988 presidential election, the percent minority in the district of voting age, percentage of district who had attended some college, and the median household income of the district. These are examined to analyze their independent and collective effect on the representatives frequency of supporting the Christian Coalition (CC) agenda. The following hypotheses are the expected empirical patterns establish upon logic and accomplished wisdom. It is expected that party affiliation will be a major(ip) factor in the frequency of a representative voting with the CC agenda, regardless of the non-partisan claim made by the CC organization. Specifically, if a representative were a Republican, she or he would vote more consistently with the CC agenda than a Democrat. Additionally, it is hypothesized that the greater a distri cts vote for Republican George bush in the 1988 presidential election, the juicyer their representatives support for the CC agenda. This assumption is based on the belief that a Republican vote for president would slackly translate into the election of a Republican or at the least, a conservative Democrat representative. With regard to the percent minorities in a district, it is hypothesized that because high concentrations of minorities tend to live in urban areas, which tend to receive a large portion of social services and entitlements, the elected representative would non vote in favor of the CC agenda which often seeks to margin federal spending in these areas.