WASHINGTON (AFP) — The "Palin factor" may have boosted support for Republican presidential contender John McCain among evangelical Christians but he should not bank on the religious right putting him in the White House as it did George W. Bush in 2004, analysts said Tuesday.
White evangelical Christians were key in getting Bush elected to a second term in 2004, but the US political landscape has changed for this year's contest, analysts from the Pew Research think-tank told reporters at a forum in Washington.
For a start, fewer voters, including evangelicals, align themselves with the Republican party.
"Since about 2005 we have seen a sharp decline in the number of people calling themselves Republicans," Scott Keeter, director of survey research at the Washington-based Pew Research Center, told reporters.
"The Democratic Party has a bigger advantage among the public than they've had any time in our polling since 1992," he added.
The same slump is apparent, although not as dramatic, among white evangelicals, who voted massively for Bush in 2004.
"Evangelical voters have displayed a great deal of dissatisfaction with the current state of things, including the Republican Party," said John Greene, senior fellow at the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.
And yet on Tuesday, it was the Democrats who appeared to be on the defensive as polls put McCain ahead of or tied with his Democratic rival for the presidency, Barack Obama.
"All the polls show a significant convention bounce for the Republicans ... and very high approval of Sarah Palin's selection as the vice presidential candidate," said Keeter.
Gallup had McCain at 49 percent and Obama at 44, noting a major shift by white women and independent voters to the Republican ticket thanks largely to the "Palin factor".
A poll by CNN and the Opinion Research Corporation had Obama at 49 percent and McCain at 48.
Another poll, by CBS, showed McCain doubling his support among evangelicals -- from 24 percent before he named the unknown conservative Alaska governor as his running mate to 48 percent afterwards, Keeter said.
"McCain achieved a doubling of support among a key voter group" by choosing Palin, "a strong evangelical woman", Keeter said.
But the post-convention bounce was unlikely to last.
"Some of what we are seeing now may be, if not ephemeral, subject to change with further events in the campaign," he said, without going into detail.
Greene pointed out that Palin was "relatively new, even to evangelicals, so it will be interesting to see how well she wears."
Another factor that could affect the religious vote was that mainstream Protestants have shifted to the Democratic Party this year -- 45 percent versus 43 percent four years ago.
An "extraordinarily low satisfaction" rate among Americans with the state of the US economy -- fewer than one in five are happy with the way the country is going -- has also knocked Republican popularity.
"In conditions like this, we typically don't see the incumbent party winning elections," Keeter said.
And moral issues, which are important to evangelicals and other conservatives, have lost traction: abortion was down eight points in importance among all voters since 2004, and gay marriage was down four points, according to Pew.
Also working against McCain is the rising number of Americans who say they are not affiliated to any religion.
That number has grown by four percent over the past 20 years, with young adults significantly more likely to say they are not linked to a particular faith.
In the primaries, young Democratic voters were far more enthusiastic and numerous than their Republican counterparts, and the religiously unaffiliated were a very important part of the Democrats' congressional victories in 2006, Keeter said.
But the religious group both parties should pay attention to is white, non-Hispanic Catholics.
"The white Catholic community is evenly divided between Obama and McCain -- quite a difference from 2004," when Bush won the majority of Catholic votes, said Green.
"There is a possibility that the Democrats might do better with white Catholics than in 2004 -- they are the quintessential swing-voting group," he said.
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