Republicans hope to find ‘missing ’ evangelical voters

From the multistation cafeteria to the gift shop to the theater-style sanctuary, worshipers at Prestonwood Baptist Church believe — or hope — that next year’s election will see something new. Long-lost evangelical voters. “So many don’t vote — it just makes me sick,” said Marjoray Wilemon, a retiree from Arlington, Texas, who has seen a lot of politics in her 94 years. “I hope that some people will realize what kind of bad shape we’re in.”

Like more than 6,000 others at the Prestonwood mega-church near Dallas, Wilemon had just watched six Republican presidential candidates appeal to evangelical, born-again Christians.

Estimates suggest there were as many as 17 million “missing ” evangelical voters in 2012, though some political analysts question whether the potential number is that high.

Prestonwood pastor Jack Gra- ham interviewed the six GOP candidates in attendance — Ben Carson, Carly Fiorina, Jeb Bush, Ted Cruz, Rick Santorum and Mike Huckabee — and said afterward that he is seeing “a surge of interest among evangelicals” ahead of the 2016 election.

Ralph Reed, founder and chairman of the Faith & Freedom Coalition, which co-sponsored the event, told the crowd that evangelical Christians made up 27% of the electorate in 2012, a presidential year, and 32% of voters in the 2014 midterm elections.

Yet as many as 17 million evangelicals stayed home in 2012, he added, an election in which President Obama beat Mitt Romney by about 5 million votes.

John Green, a political scientist at the University of Akron who specializes in religion and politics, is skeptical there are so many missing evangelical voters.

It all depends on how you define evangelicals, Green said. Turnout is already high among voters who strongly identify as evangelical Christians, he said, and “to make the numbers big enough, you’ve got to include a wide diversity of people,” including voters who may not base their vote on religion or social issues.

Ivette Lozano, a Dallas doctor who attended the Prestonwood event, said she thinks evangelicals “are going to be the decisive vote” in 2016 because of increased participation.

Paige Gilbert, 22, a student at the University of Texas-Dallas, said, “I think we need somebody who can compromise. ... I think the idea of compromise has been lost.”