Religion

Politicususa -  A new multi-university research project found that the debate did nothing to change voter preferences and that Biden is actually doing a better job of holding on to his supporters after the debate than Trump. A multi-university project called CHIP50, which includes Northeastern University, Harvard University, Rutgers University, and the University of Rochester, issued a new report concluding that the first presidential debate had no impact on voter preferences. The report found:

The predominant pattern we see in the data is stability in voters’ preferences. Overall, 94% of those who chose Biden and 86% of those who chose Trump in our May survey still preferred the same candidate after the debate. There was a small rate of change from Biden to Trump or vice versa– less than 3% shifted in either direction. We observed more churn between those who favored either Biden or Trump and the “Other” category. About 4% of Biden’s and 6% of Trump’s supporters in the earlier wave shifted to “Other” post-debate. At the same time, 6% of “Other” shifted to Biden, and another 6% shifted to Trump. 

Raw Story - The Religious Right, for decades, has been repeating the talking point that liberals waged war on the American family when they took religion out of the United States' public schools. But University of Pennsylvania historian Jonathan Zimmerman, in a Philadelphia Inquirer column published on July 8, argues that their claim is contradicted by actual U.S. history.

"In earlier eras," Zimmerman explains, "religious instruction wasn't nearly as common as (Republicans) say. And when it did happen, it was promoted by political liberals as well as conservatives. You're unlikely to hear that from Republicans in Louisiana — who recently pushed through a law requiring the posting of the Ten Commandments in all classrooms — or in Oklahoma, where the GOP superintendent of education ordered schools to teach the Bible in grades five through 12."...

The historian points out that in response to an 1896 questionnaire, Nevada's school superintendent wrote that "there is not one school in the State where the Bible is read." And when 26 California school districts responded to that same questionnaire 128 years ago, 19 of them reported no reading of the Bible. "Religious instruction is not as traditional as many of us suppose," Zimmerman emphasizes.