This point about “moral” conservatives being less likely to understand the political implications of their moral preferences is driven home further by examining 2000 data. In 2000, when abortion and moral preferences were somewhat less politically salient, only 44 percent of the moral conservatives correctly placed Bush to the right of Gore on abortion—a percentage far lower than the 64 percent in the general population and not much higher than the 33 percent that would be expected from chance alone. Yet, as in 2004, this group was the most likely (69 percent) to consider the abortion issue “very” or “extremely” important to them. But it was clearly important primarily in a religious, not political, sense.
