Earlier this week, I gave an interview to a state reporter on the role of religion in this year’s election. When she asked what role it has played, I had to say “not much.” Mobilizing religious voters has generally required salient social issues. While its possible to imagine a religious left focused on economic issues (and some folks are attempting to build one), religious impact in our recent elections has been associated with social conservatives.

My guess is that, at the end of the day, McCain will do well among religious voters, but social issues have been largely absent from this election. The economy has crowded out most everything else.

Another thing that has been crowded out is the Supreme Court and federal courts. While nominees to the Court have never been a leading issue — lurking in the background and most important to the politically engaged, it’s my impression that we have heard more about it in the past.

The best part about politics, and particularly presidential elections, is that each news story or political ad  demonstrates the well-known negotiation theory of confirming evidence.  In other words, we only believe data that confirms what we already think.  And, watching the debate last night or listening to the political commentary afterwards probably confirmed for you what you already thought about the candidates.  And, this phenomenon doesn’t really help us or the candidates. 

Over at his blog, Brazen Maverick, one of our students, Sam Sarver, echoes a conversation that has been happening here about the difficulty of communication across the ideological divide. He was singularly unimpressed with Sarah Palin’s performance in Thursday’s debate but recognizes that others (I would be among them) thought that she did quite well, albeit with neither syntax or word choice calculated to appeal to academic types.

Mr. Sarver wonders whether people holding what seem to be radically differing perceptions of reality can ever talk to one another. I think that they can, but mostly they don’t.