God's on Our Side: The Risk Calculus of Religious Messaging in American Politics

In recent years, Democrat and Republican elites have grown increasingly distinct on the matter of religion, with Republican candidates embracing more religious language and Democratic candidates increasingly sidestepping religion in favor of increasingly secular and non-religious rhetoric. Despite this trend, however, a large number of Democratic voters still identify as religious. This poses a challenge for Democratic candidates who must seek to court the funds and approval of secular Democratic activists and voters without alienating religious voters and risking their chances of reelection. This study uses a survey experiment to determine how voters respond to three different types of candidate messaging: religious, moral, and economic. I find that religious respondents of both parties evaluate candidates who use religious messaging more favorably than nonreligious respondents. However, all respondents, regardless of party or level of church attendance, preferred candidates who used moral messaging, or messaging that frames key issues as a matter of fundamental right or wrong in a way that is distinctly not religious. Therefore, I conclude that moral messaging might be a key strategy to help candidates appeal to a middle ground between their religious and non-religious voters and activists.Master of Art