Christine O'Donnell has said a lot of kooky things. Right now people are focusing on her Creationism. Though I'm obviously not a Creationist I think mocking someone for this belief in a political context is somewhat strange: the survey literature is pretty robust that Americans are split down the middle on opinions about evolution. More specifically most of the polling shows that around ~50% of Americans tend to reject the validity of evolutionary theory when asked. This is what I like to call a broad but shallow belief; for the vast majority of Americans attitudes about evolution are really just cultural markers, not stances of deep feeling or impact. One point of evidence for this conjecture is that polling on evolution is easy to massage through framing. Another is that Republican candidates for the presidency do not invariably hew to a Creationist line despite the likelihood that the majority of primary voters are Creationist. Politicians react to incentives, and my own hunch is that there isn't a strong push from the Christian Right on evolution as there is on abortion or gay marriage. I've posted plenty on how Creationists are more female, less intelligent, more conservative, more likely to be ethnic minorities, less educated, etc. Here I want to put the spotlight parameters which might shed some light on the O'Donnell race. Is her kooky opinion on evolution a particular liability in Mid-Atlantic Delaware? Are Creationists less likely to vote? And what are the regional breakdowns which might explain the bi-coastal shock and amusement at O'Donnell's opinions? First, to gauge a sense of Delaware's religious culture I looked at the Religious Landscape Survey. Because of the small sample size the margin of errors were large, but going through the data I think it is safe to say that Delaware is near the "middle of the road" in reference to the national sample, perhaps just a bit on the more secular and/or religiously liberal end of the spectrum. In the South it seems that Delaware would be very religiously liberal, while in the Northeast it is probably a touch on the more conservative side. Next, I used the GSS data set. There are four variables which address evolution: CREATION: 1. God created man pretty much in his present form at one time within the last 10,000 years 2. Man has developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life. God had no part in this process. 3. Man has developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God guided this process, including man's creation EVOLVED: Human beings, as we know them today, developed from earlier species of animals. Is that true or false? SCITESTY and SCITEST4: Both also ask if human beings developed from earlier species of animals. Answers though are definitely true, probably true, probably not true, and definitely not true. I looked to see who voted in the year 2000, variable VOTE00. Note that the questions were asked between 2000-2008, so the "Not Eligible" category simply points to the individuals in the samples in the mid-to-late 2000s who were not yet 18 and could not vote in the 2000 election.
Voted in 2000 ElectionDid not vote in the 2000Not eligible to vote 2000
God Created Man434432
Man Has Evolved, But God Guided414245
