GOP's Hold on Evangelicals Weakening

The incumbent, Rep. Mark Kennedy (R), is vacating his seat to run for the Senate. The national GOP has spared no effort to bolster Bachmann. President Bush, Vice President Cheney, political strategist Karl Rove, House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) and Commerce Secretary Carlos M. Gutierrez all have been out to campaign for her.

Unlike some Republican candidates across the country, Bachmann is not running away from Bush. She says she is "thrilled" to be associated with him.

But the president's ratings have slipped even within his most loyal constituency. Since the start of his second term, Bush's favorability rating has dropped from 52 percent to 42 percent among all adults, and from 71 percent to 60 percent among white evangelical Protestants, according to Washington Post-ABC News polls.

"I think he's too set in his way to listen to what's really going on in Iraq," Sunde said. She noted that her rising concern about the war "possibly could" lead her to cross party lines and vote for Wetterling.

She is not alone in Anoka, Garrison Keillor's hometown and a place that, like the imaginary Lake Wobegon, defies stereotypes about religious conservatives.

"If you're pro-life and mad about the war, where do you go? That's the Bachmann-Wetterling race in a nutshell," said state Rep. Jim Abeler, 52, a Republican who represents part of the 6th district.

Jim Bernstein, 56, a Democrat who served as Minnesota's commerce commissioner under then-Gov. Jesse Ventura, agreed: "There are a lot of people here who say, 'I'm pro-life, but I'm also concerned about health care, about education, about jobs.' "

Across the country, many Democratic candidates are wooing religious voters by talking about their faith. Wetterling is not among them. Her campaign manager calls her "a very spiritual woman," but says: "We have her all over the district now, so much so that she's not able to attend church."

Bachmann, on the other hand, attends an evangelical megachurch and is known for her unsuccessful effort to put a state constitutional amendment against same-sex marriage on the November ballot. If same-sex marriage spreads, she has warned, "public schools would have to teach that homosexuality and same-sex marriages are normal, natural and that maybe children should try them."

Christopher P. Gilbert, a political scientist at Gustavus Adolphus College in central Minnesota, said there "haven't been a lot of candidates in Minnesota who closely associate themselves with the Christian right, but Bachmann has. She's the real deal when it comes to religion in politics."

Nationally, the Republicans' once formidable hold on churchgoing voters has begun to slip. Among those who say they attend church more than once a week, the GOP still holds a commanding lead. The main shift is among weekly churchgoers, about a quarter of all voters. Two years ago, they favored the GOP by a double-digit margin. But in the new Pew survey, 44 percent leaned toward Republicans and 43 percent toward Democrats, a statistical dead heat.

The slippage is particularly striking among evangelicals. According to Pew data, the portion of white evangelical Protestants who identify themselves as Republicans rose steadily from 2000 to 2004 but leveled off this year at about half. The percentage who support keeping troops in Iraq has dropped to 55 percent, from 68 percent in early September.