The Loveland Catholic and mother of two altar boys attends church Sundays, volunteers there during the week and acts as a Eucharistic minister, sharing the body of Christ at Holy Communion.

VALUES VOTERS

How big a role did moral issues play in this year's election? Consider these figures: • Of the 41 percent of voters nationwide who say they attend church at least weekly, 61 percent voted for Bush. • In Ohio, where 38 percent of voters say they attend church weekly, 65 percent voted for Bush. • In Kentucky, where 47 percent attend church weekly, 64 percent voted for Bush. • Nationwide, the top issues cited by voters were: moral values, 22 percent; economy/jobs, 20 percent; terrorism, 19 percent; Iraq, 15 percent; health care, 8 percent; taxes, 5 percent; and education, 4 percent. • Of those who considered moral values their top issue, 85 percent of Ohioans and 93 percent of Kentuckians voted for Bush. Source: Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International exit polls conducted for the Associated Press and CNN

Though the 47-year-old senior-services manager counts herself among the "moral majority," she said her religious beliefs didn't dictate her decision to vote for President Bush.

She views Bush as a more decisive leader than Kerry, especially with regard to the war on terror and tax cuts.

It does bother her that Kerry, a fellow Catholic, favors abortion rights and civil unions for gay couples, contrary to the pope's stances, she said.

"George Bush is a better example of his own faith than I believe John Kerry is," Fredrickson said Friday.

"He's not a Sunday Christian, where you go to church once a week and share your faith because that's the politically right thing to do.... Bush is an example of someone that lives out their faith."

Behind the votes

Analysts and political strategists are tracking voters like Fredrickson. Armed with new exit-poll data, they have dubbed so-called values voters - who support candidates based on moral issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage - as the top political power base to tap.

People who believe in banning abortion and gay marriage gave Bush his victory over Kerry, some said.

The numbers appear to support such a theory.

Last week, pollsters hired by the Associated Press and CNN questioned thousands across the country as they left voting booths. As part of the survey, they asked voters to rate the most important issue among seven: taxes, education, Iraq, terrorism, economy/jobs, moral values and health care.

Nationwide, the highest percentage of voters - 22 percent - picked moral values. That compares to 20 percent who picked economy/jobs and 19 percent who picked terrorism. Similar responses prevailed in Ohio, considered a battleground state, and in Kentucky, a Republican presidential stronghold.

Some conservative religious groups trumpeted the findings as evidence the numbers of the moral majority match their name, and liberal groups were quaking. Democratic leaders are being counseled to pay more attention to conservative moderates.

"It looks as though the anti-gay-marriage sentiment has galvanized the Christian right," said Allan M. Winkler, distinguished professor of history at Miami University.

"More people are feeling a commitment to what they perceive as a sense of moral values than I expected."

But not all researchers and social scientists are buying it, saying there are problems with how the poll was worded and is being interpreted.

"It's to the benefit of the left to portray the religious right as a monolith; you stir up your side with horror stories about the other side," said Rhys Williams, who heads the University of Cincinnati's sociology department.

"Is the country more conservative than it was 30 years ago?"

Without a doubt. But, on the other hand, almost 50 million people voted for one of the more liberal Democratic senators in Congress. Bush won decisively; he didn't win overwhelmingly."

The people in the pews weren't the only ones in Bush's corner.

The exit polls also point to people who live in rural areas, people earning more than $100,000 a year and people who attended college and earned degrees as groups who voted in droves for Bush.

"I don't believe that the religious right put Bush in office," said John Green, director of the Ray C. Bliss Institute of Applied Politics at the University of Akron.

"There's no doubt that the evangelical Protestants and the traditional Catholics contributed mightily to President Bush's victory, but a lot of other groups did too."

Yet only 17 percent of voters in Ohio and 25 percent in Kentucky described themselves as "white conservative Protestants," while 25 percent of voters in Ohio and 45 percent in Kentucky said they were "white evangelical born-again."

"There's a significant minority of voters that care very much about traditional morality and will vote accordingly," Green said. "In close elections, that group can matter."

Gay rights, anti-abortion

But what constitutes traditional morality? Republicans controlled the definition during the debates by firmly sticking to gay rights and anti-abortion issues, Williams said.

For instance, some prominent Catholic bishops made abortion the No. 1 issue, pushing out of the spotlight other historically Catholic battles over the death penalty and war, Williams said.

Even Protestant clergy who worked on behalf of Kerry were stymied by the socially conservative bent of their congregations.

The Rev. Rousseau O'Neal, pastor of Rockdale Baptist in Avondale and a leader of a coalition of several dozen churches that worked to get out the vote, said he could tell early in the election that Kerry was hampered in Cincinnati because he was from Massachusetts, where some gay marriages are legal.

Homosexuality rings up equal opposition in black as well as white congregations, O'Neal said.

Traditional love-thy-neighbor messages can be drowned out by sermons on sexual-social issues, O'Neal said.

"We attempted to show the immorality of the war; we attempted to show the morality of seeing to the needs of the least among us. ... But for some strange reason, we just couldn't get that across," he said.

"Here we have more of the middle-class and the poor distressed than ever before, and we're more obsessed with the bedroom than the kitchen."

That's the kind of stereotype Fredrickson says she wants to avoid.

Conservatives can be compassionate and nonjudgmental in the voting booth, she said. It doesn't matter what a candidate's faith is, so long as he or she has one, Fredrickson said.

"I strongly believe in faith. If people don't have it, I don't get it," she said.

E-mail damos@enquirer.com