retains its leadership in the world, and that's something i'm very much looking forward to helping to be a part of, so thank you very much, everybody. c-span is going to be live in just a couple minutes at noon eastern with another post election discussion, the american enterprise institute hosting with norman ornstein who we saw in the last panel and campaign finance will be there with michael barrone. that gets started in just a few minutes. next week the national oil spill commission starting two days of hearings on its preliminary findings of the causes in the oil rig explosion. we'll have live coverage here on

c-span2 that begins monday at 9 a.m. eastern. >> another look now at the midterm elections, the faith and freedom coalition hosted this discussion with chairman raffle

reed. it's about 45 minutes. [inaudible conversations] >> okay, well, good morning, everybody. i'm ralph reed, the founder and chairman for the faith and freedom coalition, a profamily conservative and profree private organization. we were founded in the summer of 2009 with the express and explicit purpose of ensuring that conservative people of faith and their conservative allies particularly though not

exclusively, evangelical christians and mass atepidding catholics were registered to vote, engaged, and turning out to the polls in record numbers and i would say this morning we can say mission accomplished. agree kellor our executive director ran the operation. are you ready now? it was the most ambitious, the most comprehensive, and the most effective voter contact in get out and vote effort aimed at the conservative faith community in modern political history or at least as long as i've been doing which is 30 years. 16 million voter guides, 8 million pieces of mail, 3 pieces of pail to every social conservative household in certain areas. they received an average of

three phone calls, and. of them received a knock on the door. half a million door knocks along the i-4 corridor in orlando, in pennsylvania, especially in i can't remember the district number, but the pennsylvania 11, in nevada, in california, in ohio, particularly in cincinnati, so anyway, all that to say all in a total of 58.8 million voter contacts directed at frequently mass attending catholics and evangelical christians. i'm going to leave the full data to glen who is the expert and did the poll and promised me i would get the talk lines at 5 m, but i didn't get them until 7, glen. it's an astonishing set of data. it shows that 32% of the voters

identified as the christian conservative movement. 32% of the electorats identified with the christian movement and 25% consistented of white evangelical christians. both are the largest numbers every recorded in a modern midterm election meaning since that kind of data was kept with the rise of the so-called religious right in the 1970s. that, by the way, is an increase of 7 points over the 2006 baseline which was 25%. they voted 78 to 28 republican. by the way, broke more heavily republican than this same constituency did in 1994 when i conducted a similar survey when i was with the christian

coalition. another interesting thing that i think glen will go into in greater detail, but i think it's one of the great untold stories of the 2010 elections which is that not only are the tea party and the evangelical movement not at odds and not only are they not distipght and separate movements, but as the data makes clear and there's other data to support this, not just our poll, these movements are intertwined, and there is an enormous amount of overlap. 52% of all of voters who said they were part of the tea party movement also said they were part of the christian conservative movement, so the majority of the people voting yesterday as tea party voters or who have gone to a tea party event or part of the movement are christians or catholics. i don't know if we have this

cross tab or not, glen, but according to my analysis of it, about two-thirds of religious conservative self-identify as members with the tea party movement. evangelicals are tea party movement supports enand tea party members consider themselves to be socially conservative. we have data to demonstrate that. all that to say is what we know from yesterday is that one of the largest, if not the largest single voting block not elector electorat is people of faith. they turned out in largest numbers in the midterm elections since these numbers have been kept and voted more overwhelmingly republican than they have in a midterm. these voters can want be ig -- cannot be ignored. either party ignores them or o

opposes them at their parol at the voting place. the voters heavily in the south and midwest, that's where the bulk of the congressional gains took place, not by any means all of them, but this vote, the socially conservative faith-based vote was the fuel in the engine that drove one of the biggest midterm victories in the history of our country, so with that, i will turn it over to glenn to walk through the findings in greater detail. >> thanks a lot. good morning. >> talk into the microphone. >> yep. i know you've asked for copies

of this. as soon as this is over, i'll have it posted to our blog if that's okay with you, and our blog is available through our website. it's right there at the top. you'll see it at the middle, it cannot be simpler to get to. i'll e-mail my team when i'm done and have them put it on. we did a survey last night, 1,000 people who voted or early voted in the election, and we find that the best thing to do is do an election night survey because it's random. you're not picking the geographic locations, and also people are not, you know, reacting to what they heard in terms of the post election analysis. we do the calls starting at 5 eastern and work our way across the country. i want to talk about the broader findings and get into the specific stuff that ralph touched on.

first voters who self-described as born again or evangelical. 78 of them voted republican on the ballot, 28% preferred the democrat. 13% are soft, 10% independent, and another 21% democrat. ralph touched on the geographic difference. the northeast where republicans picked up 13 seats, 14% of white e evangelicals live there. 25% live in the midwest with 20 seats picked up. 24% in the south with 21 seats picked up and 17% in the west where they picked up 7 so far with undecided races still out there. known of those -- none of those could be take aways from republican. republicans lost what could be

lost, and if there's anything beyond the 61 seat pickup so far, so two-thirds of the pick ups come in the two regions where 69% of evangelicals, white evangelical voters live. 66% of them are women, evenly split from 18-54 year olds. 26% somewhat, 23% are moderate, and 8% liberal. 71% are married. the president's approval rating is 10% with this group -- >> what's the married with children number? >> married is 71%,34% over all have children. i have to do the math there. 4% of -- no, that wouldn't be right. i'll look in the cross tab. 71% are married, 34% have

children under the age of 18. 18% approve of the president, 79% disapprove. 39 percent are supporters of the tea party and 43% of those are white evangelicals. these are not two totally different groups, there's an overlap there. getting into the data, the difficult economy created the wrong track number going back to 1994. when you look at the three change elections in midterms. 199458% the country was in the wrong direction, in 2006 it was 63% and now it's up to 67%. no wonder those were significant change elections. president's approval rating among people who voted, again,

not voters overall or adults, but people who voted yesterday or in yesterday's elections because some early voted, the president's approval rating looks stunningly similar to what president bush had in 2006. if you see bush, 42% approval. 55% disapprove. president obama 43% and 56%. no differencement the intensity. 46% strongly disapproved of obama. when you look at the major party vote, major party vote pretty much matches the number of seats won, so it does show you that since redistricting in 2000, it's very competitive clues to, you know, what the major party vote is how many seats the party that wins is going to take home. turning to issues, not

surprisingly we asked people top issues, first and second choice. jobs in the economy number one and health care number two. look, among how it broke down. illegal immigration was their top issue, and that was low, it was 10%. they voted republican 81 to 18 or the chart says by 63 points. federal spending in the deficit, again voter republican by 63 points. moral value voters voted republican by 50 points. taxes voted republican 52, 36. health care 53, 45, economy and jobs by 3 points. the only issue that the democrats won who said social security and medicare, iraq and afghanistan and education were the top issues. on how people voted, you see

base republicans 98 to 1 -- by the way, i'm old school. republican until 2000 was blue. you look around the world republican color is conservative. i meant to switch it today because prez is used to the red, but here until 2000 when the press thought it was unfair to the democrats they were red, they switched it every four years, and then of course, the longest election in history republican reds stuck, so when you see this, understand that, and i'll change this before we put it on the blog just because people are used to this color scheme as much. independents broke 65-27 for the republican. republicans and democrats washed each other out. african-american and white democrats voted at the same level for the democrat. base republicans were united and soft republicans were. just like in 2006 when independents voted for the

democrat, independents this time were the difference makers in terms of how much the republicans won by. in terms of tornout, christian conservative voters, supportive of the christian conservative movement, 78 to 20 republican. 27% of the electorat, 92% to 6. those who are self-described and they are white evangelical christians, 78 to 21. other white voters, 51-25, and the rest of electorat voted republic. right to life voters, people who volt on that issue and it's important to them, 77-20 republican. pro-choice voter rs, the same number, 35 percent of each group, and then the issue doesn't make a difference to them voted republican 57-40. looking at a few other socioeconomic ways of breaking the data, those who are married

58-38. those who are not voted democrat by 8 points. married men heavily republican and married women voted republican. now, to who are not married voted, women voted heavily democrat. i have that figure, i'll have to pull it out. those with children more than republic than those without. those who are moms of children under the age of 18 voted republican by 3 points, dads voted republican 2-1. when you look interestingly enough on terms of the turnout, more people who voted told us they vehicle voted for john mccain than barak obama. they had a turnout problem and more obama voters from 2008 defected 18% compared to 37% of

mccain voters. where you get your information from, this was interesting. republicans won from tv or the internet. democrats won by five among those who get it from the newspaper. of course, it's multiple sources. on the internet we added what kind of site they get their information from. social networks about campaigns only 2% say that's where they got a lot of information from. they voted republican by 3 points. from mainstream media websites like cnn or fox news, it was 56 to 41 republican. we asked -- we've been asking this question consistently. was your vote a message to support or oppose president obama? you see 40% was to oppose the president, 23% said to support it. basically the same margin in 2006 for bush. more people said it was a vote about the president, 63%

compared to 55% in 2006, but look at clinton in 1994. it was a minus four for president clinton compared to a minus 17 for both presidents bush and obama. much more nationalized elections since 2000. even in 1998 when the impeachment factor was seen as a big deal, you know, people said it was not much of a factor as it became after the 2000 elections. among christian conservatives, 65% said their vote was a message opposing the president and his policies and programs. 13% said no, their message was supporting it and 21% said it wasn't a message about him. among tea party supporters 81% says it was opposing policy and programs. 4% were confused, and 15% said it was not a message.

we also asked voters thinking about members of congress and other political leaders would you say that members of congress and other political leaders are ignoring our relish hair heritage? 27%. i know, ralph, you wanted to add comments on that after i present these data. we also asked only republican voters which is more important to getting america back on the right track, cutting taxes which among republicans overall was 16%, reducing spending, 40%, or restoring moral values, 3 #%. you can see spending and moral values are relatively close, and among base republicans, those who say they are strong republicans, it's basically even 36 to 34, and among soft republicans, the gap is wider and soft republicans place more emphasis on reducing spending.

among christian conservatives, 44% say we need to restore moral values to get the country back on the right track, 27% say spending among tea party voters they are split between spending and restoring moral values at 34 to 33. you see taxes is in the teens among both groups. just wrapping up, yes, very much wrapping up. in terms of where they got information, 64% got it from tv news. 45% said newspapers. again, people could give multiple responses, not just say the top one. internet was 33%, radio was 21. we asked this in the past, and i got back data on that, i just didn't have to time to pull it up this morning because i wanted to get ralph his data two hours late. among internet folks who got information from the internet as

i mentioned it was 2% overall, but 5% say it was from social networks sites like facebook and youtube where most of the rest said mainstream media websites. with that, i'll open it up to questions or comments. >> yeah, just one quick comment, our take away, and then we'll open it up. this was a full-throated, undeniable repeatuation of this administration's policies and the failed economic stewardship of this president. it was an across the board electoral catastrophe hitting every key voting group, losing all catholics and losing mass attending catholics by an 18 to 40, a slowghter among the key

groups. the evangelical groups turning out in largest numbers we've seen voting heavily republican. i don't know what you data showed on women, but the c nrk n poll was 52-48 which is basically a tie, losing men i believe by 13 points in the c nrk n data. what do you have? one point? >> white women it was 57 republican, democrat and for our poll on white women we had 57-40. we were different with 58-40. >> you can see this is -- >> a one point difference. >> this is really across the board. we are viewing this as a two election process at a minimum. the house is now in pro-family

tax cutting fiscally conservative hands. we are very excited about leader joan john boehner and his leadership team, but there's work to be done and we're not going to rest until president obama is replaced by pro-life profamily conservative president, and harry reid is replaced by a pro-life profamily conservative leader in the majority and senate. we're redoubling our efforts going into 201. as you can imagine, we are pleased with what happened yesterday. with that, i'll open it up to questions that you can direct to either of us or both of us. >> you mentioned the house race -- [inaudible] i know that was targeted for -- [inaudible]

>> well, in our case it was across the board. it was the bad vote on health care. it was the fact that he was one of those who, you know, along with bart stupak did not vote to require that house confers seed or excuse me, that they instruct their house conferees. this was before pelosi ran through the senate version. there was a critical vote on whether the house was instructed not to go to the senate language and hold firm on the stupak language. he voted wrong on that vote. he really voted wrong on just about everything, so i think what you find as a result of last night is that if you claim to be a pro-life democrat, but you voted consistently with nancy pelosi and steny and

against pro-life convictions, you paid a price at the ballot box. >> [inaudible] >> we were in a toe l of what was it? 62 house races and won 47 of them. i don't know that we're releasing that list, but we'll be happy if you go to our websites in previous releases, we announced we were doing radio in 24 of those districts. you can see where we were. just if i could quickly to explain mechanically how our project worked, we built files of social conservative both evangelical and catholic, a total of 7.7 million households and depending on the region, district, or state, they got multiple pieces of mail, multiple phone calls, e-mails, text messages, and in some cases

a knock on the door. we were trying to ensure those people turned out in the largest numbers possible, and we think that outcome was successful. as i said, it wasn't all due to our efforts because we were throwing up a spin kier in a 40 miles per hour wind. >> polls show and others show tea parties and evangelical christians mainly white. i'm curious about reaching out to the african-american and hispanic. who identify themselves as pro-life and christians and conservatives, how are you going to reach out to them because the democrats do give them more voting and that i think i want to know how you reach out to those groups for the presidential election. >> yeah, we made that a major priority this year. i assembled a national minority

task force to work on making sure that we built bridges to both african-american churches where we frankly had great success on marriage and life and school choice and education reform, as well as the hispanic community, but i think the exit polling is pretty clear that we got a long way to go. i don't know what glenn's data shows because i haven't digested all of it yet, but i looked at the cnn exit pole and hispanics vote broke 66-33 democrat which is only 3% better for republicans than they did two years ago. glenn, is jr. data -- is your data handy? >> yes. 61-36 republican voters african-american was 70-91 and 40-57 on hispanics. >> that's much better.

>> [inaudible] >> now, look, we were out there knocking on doors and ringing doorbells and making phone calls and distributing voter guides in churches in the ale -- allen west seat. we were involved in the south carolina race with tim scott. in fact, he spoke at our conference in september, and, you know, we went all in in florida because of marco rubio and all in in new mexico. we recognize we have a long way to go, but every incremental gain we make among this voter group is a huge step forward, so i guess i'll prefer to believe glenn's day data and say we got 40% of the hispanic vote which is better than the 31% vote that mccain got. we can do better in that group, bush got 44% of the vote.

the african-american vote is tougher as long as barak obama is in the white house, but we're not going to give up. we'll keep trying. .. is until i get a chance to fully digest this data and really look at what we see happening but in from sort of a 30,000 foot level i see

the agenda broadening. we've always thought that was going to happen. when i was at the christian coalition we helped pass welfare reform. we helped pass the first balanced budget in 40 years. we passed the deepest, broadest, tax cut directed at married families with children in the post-world war ii period. we worked on economic and fiscal issues even then. now with the obama spending spree and this out of control big government program in d.c. and with the tea party movement, i think what you're going to find is more and more people of faith working on a broader range of issues, remaining true to their pro-life, pro-marriage and pro-religious freedom convictions but also recognizing that a big out of control government that is bankrupting future generations is not just a fiscal issue, it is a moral issue. so that's the first thing that see. the second thing that i see, and i think this is something that has enormous,

long-term political implications for the country, is you're looking at a constituency that has moved from the wilderness years of roughly 1920 to 1979 when the moral majority was founded, to significant political effectiveness and influence. and now i think increasing maturation, sophistication, and technological proficiency. if this constituency can do through groups like faith and freedom coalition, susan b anthony and others, if they can become a conservative analog to what the labor unions and civil rights organizations have done to turn out minority and union households this has huge long-term implications for our politics because this constituency, as i said, is bigger than either of those constituencis. and my view is the 20 years from now, you're going to have the social conservative equivalent of an nra or an

afl-cio or an afscme. and there are going to be contacting and turning out and not registering millions but tens of millions of voters. what does that mean long term? what that probably means you have more democrats are going to go, we better figure out how to appeal to those voters. if they keep kicking away those voters 78-22 it will be hard for them to win statewide races as glen pointed out in the heartland and in the south. do you have a follow-up. >> if i could. there are a number of prominent evangelicals, say the more thee logical side than political said warn against coming into the tea party ideology in terms of things like, albert moler talked about this not too long ago he warned christians shouldn't be too entrenched in the tea party

because of differing ideologies. is that a concern that you see? i know you talk about there is an evolution of the tea party movement but do you worry that the base, of evangelicals which is morality issue get kind of washed away in physical issues? >> no, i'm not. i'm not concerned about that and i think that what you find, and i have now been doing this long enough that i have kind of seen this movie before. in '92, which was my first presidential cycle at the christian coalition, we did a survey of evangelicals. not quite on the scale that glen did last night but it was after the election, maybe a week later. and it was a real wake-up call for us because we surveyed evangelical christians. they were probably about 20% of the vote at that time. and their number one issue was jobs and the economy. when the economy is in trouble and when people are

losing their jobs, and people can't find jobs and people are losing their homes, you, oh, yeah. so -- >> hate to interrupt your thought. >> it is not an either or, it's both. they're concerned about values and they're concerned about the economic issues. but, it's not like you go through a neighborhood when you're door-knocking and you knock on a door of a voter who doesn't frequently attend church and you go, here's a tax-and-spending flyer. then you go two doors down and you knock on the door of a, you know, somebody who frequently attends church and professes to be a born again evangelical, here's your pro-life flyer. therefore pro-life and for lower taxes and therefore limited government and therefore more individual freedom. i think to try to disaggregate these voters concerns shows a lack of understanding how comprehensive the world view is. their believers in the

and that faith covers every area of their life. moral, fiscal, business. they don't disaggregate that. their world view is the prism through which they view every issue. yeah, i wanted to, -- okay. >> i just want to ask, what do you think now that this wave conservative christian people have been voted in, what is the most important thing to accomplish overs these next two years before the voters are analyzing what happened and who to vote for in the presidential election? >> well, i don't, i don't think it's, just a handful of things. so i don't want this list to be exhaustive but i would say stop the spending. demonstrate their fiscally conservative bonefides by genuinely restraining spending and extending all of the bush tax cuts.

number two, repeal health care because that is not just a fiscal issue, it is also a moral issue, because of the extent to which the obama health care plan, if it is not repealed, will lead to unrestrained taxpayer funding of abortion. and thirdly, on a range of issues, be pro-family and pro-life and unapologetically so. glen, i think you had one piece of data in, i don't know if you can throw it up or not, that i shared at grover norquist's meeting. it showed it was about a 20-point advantage for republican candidates to be pro-life. that, you know, pro-life voters were an asset to the party, not a liability. can you pull that up? i may have the number wrong. >> yeah i'm not sure i talking about. it is possibly, this one?

.