RELIGION AND THE ELECTION: A PRELIMINARY LOOK.

The tragic news casting a pall over the Obama victory last night is the passage of constitutional amendments to ban gay marriage in Florida, Arizona, and, it appears, California. In Florida, a state that went for Obama by a 51-49 percent margin, 62 percent of voters pulled the lever for the gay marriage ban. That means that the hardcore religious right, which fueled the placement of these bans on the ballot in all three states and spearheaded the campaigns for their passage, succeeded in not only mobilizing their followers -- who were led to believe that gay marriage would spell the end of religious liberty for Christians -- but in casting the issue in a way that appealed to more moderate voters as well. In California, this included a television ad warning that elementary school children would be taught about same-sex marriage in public schools.

Meanwhile, some observers are looking at the exit polling data about religious voters and drawing conclusions about whether Obama's stepped-up talk about his faith turned the tide of these voters in his favor. I'll have more analysis on this in a piece for the main site, so for the moment I'll withhold judgment about the cause and effect of Obama's faith talk -- as opposed to his appeal more generally -- and increased share of the religious vote.

On evangelicals, some interesting data from Christianity Today, which maps the evangelical vote state-by-state. Although Obama didn't budge much off of Kerry's share of the white evangelical vote nationwide (about 24%), the map shows that evangelicals are not monolithic across the country, and that in some states they liked Obama a whole lot more than in others.

--Sarah Posner