Join the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life on election night 2008 and the following day for analysis of religion’s role in the election, a preliminary breakdown of how the religious public voted and more. The Pew Forum will host three press conference calls for journalists starting at midnight on election night and continuing through Wednesday, Nov. 5.
CONTACT
Mary Schultz Communications Manager 202.419.4556 mschultz@pewresearch.org/pewresearch-org/religion
Exit poll charts for Conference Call 3
Media availability Audio clips On-camera interviews Speaker bios and photos Forum resources
Media availability
Conference Calls 1 and 2
Senior Fellow John Green will be available to answer questions from members of the media in the immediate aftermath of the election.
When: Call 1: Wednesday, Nov. 5, 2008, 12:00 a.m. EST Call 2: Wednesday, Nov. 5, 2008, 10:00 a.m. EST
Who: John Green, Senior Fellow in Religion and American Politics, Pew Forum
RSVP: E-mail Robbie Mills at rmills@pewresearch.org/pewresearch-org/religion or call 202.419.4564 to receive the call-in credentials and reserve your place.
Conference Call 3
With the Pew Forum’s director Luis Lugo moderating, experts John Green, Greg Smith and David Masci will provide post-election analysis on how the faithful voted (including comparisons with previous elections) and address the outcomes of state ballot measures on gay marriage, stem cell research, abortion and end-of-life issues.
Exit poll charts for Conference Call 3
When: Call 3: Wednesday, Nov. 5, 2008, 2:30 p.m. EST
Who: Luis Lugo, Director, Pew Forum (moderator) John Green, Senior Fellow in Religion and American Politics, Pew Forum Greg Smith, Research Fellow, Pew Forum David Masci, Senior Research Fellow in Religion and Law, Pew Forum
RSVP: E-mail Robbie Mills at rmills@pewresearch.org/pewresearch-org/religion or call 202.419.4564 to receive the call-in credentials and reserve your place.
Audio clips
To listen to an audio transcript, click one of the links below. To save an audio file to your computer, right-click the link and select “Save Target As…”(Internet Explorer) or “Save Link As…”(Firefox).
Audio transcript of conference call 1 (Wednesday, Nov. 5, 2008, 12:00 a.m. EST)
Audio transcript of conference call 2 (Wednesday, Nov. 5, 2008, 10:00 a.m. EST)
Audio transcript of conference call 3 (Wednesday, Nov. 5, 2008, 2:30 p.m. EST)
On-camera interviews
John Green will be available for on-camera studio interviews on Wednesday, Nov. 5, between noon and 1:00 p.m. If you would like to arrange an on-camera studio interview, please contact Robbie Mills at rmills@pewresearch.org/pewresearch-org/religion or 202-419-4564.
Speaker bios and photos
Luis Lugo, Director
Luis E. Lugo became the director of the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life in January 2004. Prior to joining the Pew Forum, he served as the director of the Religion program at The Pew Charitable Trusts in Philadelphia, a position he held for seven years. Before joining the Trusts, he was a professor of political science for more than 12 years, teaching courses in international relations, Latin American politics, and religion and public policy. After studying at the University of Memphis (B.A.) and Villanova University (M.A.), he took his Ph.D. in political science at the University of Chicago. Among his published works are several edited volumes, including Religion, Public Life and the American Polity and Sovereignty at the Crossroads? Morality and International Politics in the Post-Cold War Era. A native of Cuba, he is listed in Who’s Who Among Hispanic Americans. He is married and has three children.
John Green, Senior Fellow
John C. Green is a senior fellow in religion and American politics at the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. He also serves as director of the Ray C. Bliss Institute of Applied Politics and Distinguished Professor of Political Science at the University of Akron.
John has done extensive research on American religious communities and politics. Before joining the Pew Forum, he enjoyed along association with it and other projects supported by The Pew Charitable Trusts. Since 1990, the Trusts have supported his widely cited surveys, conducted in presidential election years, on the political fault lines running through America’s religious landscape. John is also co-author of The Diminishing Divide: Religion’s Changing Role in American Politics (Brookings Institution Press, 2000), with Andrew Kohut, president of the Forum’s parent organization, the Pew Research Center, and Scott Keeter, the Center’s director of survey research.
In addition to publishing his most recent book The Faith Factor: How Religion Influences American Elections (2007), John is also the co-author of The Values Campaign: The Christian Right in American Politics (Georgetown University Press, 2006), The Bully Pulpit: The Politics of Protestant Clergy (University Press of Kansas, 1997), and Religion and the Culture Wars (Rowman & Littlefield, 1996). In addition he has published more than 60 scholarly articles and more than 35 essays in the popular press. He is widely known as an observer of national and Ohio politics, and is frequently quoted in the press, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, Newsweek, Time, NPR, CNN, ABC and CBS. The Los Angeles Times described Green as the nation’s “pre-eminent student of the relationship between religion and American politics.”
Green received his Ph.D. in Political Science from Cornell University in 1983 and his B.A. in Economics from the University of Colorado in 1975.
Greg Smith, Research Fellow
Gregory A. Smith is a Research Fellow at the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, where he contributes to the Forum’s survey research efforts. Greg holds a Ph.D. in government from the University of Virginia. His doctoral dissertation on the influence of priests on the voting behavior and political attitudes of American Catholics won the 2006 Aaron Wildavsky Award, which is given by the American Political Science Association for the best dissertation in religion and politics. His book, Politics in the Parish: The Political Influence of Catholic Priests, was published by Georgetown University Press in 2008.
Previously, Greg was a fellow at the University of Virginia Center on Religion and Democracy. Greg is also a contributor to the Encyclopedia of American Political Parties and Elections. His work has appeared in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion and has been presented at national and regional conferences.
David Masci, Senior Research Fellow
David Masci is a senior research fellow at the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, where he is the in-house expert on church-state issues. In this capacity, David conducts research and writing and gives public presentations and media interviews on various religion and law topics. Before joining the Forum, David worked for 14 years as a journalist for Congressional Quarterly, writing for many of the company’s publications, including The Daily Monitor, CQ Weekly and, most recently, The CQ Researcher. His work has been published in The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, the Los Angeles Times and a host of other national and regional newspapers.
David has a B.A. in Medieval History, magna cum laude, from Syracuse University, and a J.D. from The George Washington University Law School.
Forum resources
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Trends in Religious Groups’ Presidential Candidate PreferencesSurveys by the Pew Research Center forthe People & the Press find that Barack Obama’s lead over JohnMcCain has steadily increased since mid-September. |
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Religion & Politics ’08Candidate profiles, state statistics and analysis of religion’s impact on the 2008 campaign. |
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Special Report: The Same-Sex Marriage DebateThis report gives an overview of the gay marriage debate in America, analyzes the constitutional dimensions of the debate and looks at public opinion trends in attitudes toward gay marriage and civil unions. |
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Special Report: Americans and AbortionMore than 35 years after the U.S. Supreme Court’s historic Roe v. Wade (1973) decision granted a woman the constitutional right to terminate her pregnancy, abortion remains a controversial issue. |
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Special Report: Stem Cell Research at the Crossroads of Religion and PoliticsEmbryonic stem cell research, which uses cells found in three-to five-day-old human embryos to seek cures for a host of chronicdiseases, has sparked a major debate in the UnitedStates. |
