Here we go again. Last night, the exit polls in every single state failed to ask Democratic primary voters if they were born-again or evangelical Christians. There’s lots of news analysis this morning about how evangelicals voted in the Republican primaries and none about Democrats -- because no one has the data. This imbalance continues to reinforce the false and outdated presumption that evangelicals only vote for candidates from one party.

The National Election Pool’s only response to this (now widespread) complaint is that there is “limited real estate” on the questionnaires. Others have claimed that asking Democratic primary voters would not yield valuable or interesting data. Polling information to which we do have access casts doubt on this claim.

UPDATE: Melissa Rogers analyzes the misleading journalism that inevitably results from pigeonholing evangelical voters in exit polls.

In early January, Christianity Today found that readers preferred Obama (who came in second only to Huckabee) to Clinton by a margin of 10 percentage points in an online poll. When Relevant Magazine, the flagship publication for young evangelicals, asked readers who Jesus would vote for, they gave Obama, who bested all Republican and Democratic candidates in this poll, a 27-point edge over Clinton. Are young evangelicals in fact flocking to Obama? How does his vote count among evangelicals compare not only to Clinton’s, but to Huckabee’s, and the other Republican candidates’? It would be interesting to know, but we don’t. Because the exit polls did not collect the data.

The findings of a recent Barna study raise further intrigue. (Note that Barna measures born-again Christians differently than other pollsters. Respondents are not asked to describe themselves as "born again", but rather if they have made a personal commitment to Jesus Christ and believe that when they die they will go to Heaven.) Barna found that if the election were held today, and all of the remaining candidates from both parties were on the ballot, 20% of born-again Christian voters would vote for Clinton, 18% for Obama and 12% for Huckabee. No other candidate reached double figures, and 30% said they were still undecided.

Moreover, exit poll questions that have asked about the religiosity of Democrats have yielded valuable and interesting data so far. We have learned that Clinton has consistently done well among Catholics, while Obama has done well with those who attend religious services most frequently. This data helps us measure the effectiveness of each candidate’s message and outreach to different faith communities, but without knowing how the candidates are faring with evangelicals, any analysis will be incomplete.

One positive sign: Unlike in several previous primary states, on Super Tuesday the exit pollsters asked both Republican Democratic primary participants in every state their religious affiliation (Protestant/Catholic/Mormon/Jewish/Muslim/etc) and how frequently they attended religious services. That’s progress. We hope for more.