IT WAS once argued that the Church of England consisted of the Conservative Party at prayer. It might now be tempting to conclude on an initial reading of the US election that the Republican Party is the home for Americans at prayer.

Temptation should, though, be resisted. While faith is a sizeable part of George W. Bush’s political appeal it would be too simplistic to explain away his victory solely by reference to religious observation. These voters provide him with his base but would not be enough for him to secure a majority.

The geography of the Bush victory was starkly simple. It consisted of the southern states of the old confederacy, the several small states of the prairies and mountain West and the least industrial parts of the American Midwest (plus Alaska). The President’s triumph was based on retaining the states that he won in 2000 and launching the occasional raid on enemy territory. In most cases, he held on to his old ground with a significantly enhanced majority.

The people who predominantly reside in these states have distinctive characteristics. They are likely to attend church regularly. They often own firearms. They tend to live in rural or small-town communities. These features showed through in the voting patterns. This meant, for example, that the President won 63 per cent of the votes of those who attend church more than once a week (16 per cent of all electors) and 58 per cent of those seen on the pews each Sunday (another 26 per cent of Americans).

He took 61 per cent of those who had a gun owner in their household (a stunningly high 41 per cent of all voters satisfied this criteria). He snatched 56 per cent of the ballots of those who live in rural territory (24 per cent of citizens). With a core vote such as this, it is not surprising that 22 per cent of the electorate identified “moral values” as the most important issue of the 2004 election and that four in five endorsed Mr Bush. Similarly, nine out of ten of those who told pollsters that “religious faith” was the most significant personal quality that they sought in a presidential candidate (8 per cent of voters) opted to award the President another term in office.

But before the entire Bush constituency is dismissed as merely a collection of religious fanatics, armed to the teeth and living in the hills (or disturbingly similar to the Taleban), it should be remembered that the army of secular Americans is about the same size as those for whom cultural conservatism is the essence of their politics.

This other America was infinitely more concerned with the economy, the provision of healthcare, and their distaste for the war in Iraq and voted solidly for Mr Kerry as a consequence.

These two Americas — the secular and the religious, the metropolitan and the rural — both turned out in unusually large numbers in this presidential battle. To a very considerable degree these two opposing factions cancelled each other out. Neither is strong enough completely to impose its will or way of life upon the other.

The crucial additional building blocks in the Bush coalition were drawn from beyond the stereotype of the Republican electorate.

Mr Bush performed notably better among three categories of Americans on Tuesday than he had done four years earlier. These were women, the elderly and Hispanic citizens.

While some of these political converts might perhaps have been religious souls, it is unlikely that it was allegiance to the church that drew them to the President. In the case of women and older voters it was almost certainly Mr Bush’s credentials as a strong leader who could defend the security of the United States that helped him.One in five Americans ranked terrorism as the most important single issue of the campaign. Of these, a smashing 86 per cent preferred the President to his opponent.

The Hispanic electorate has been wooed by the White House for the whole of Mr Bush’s tenure. He reaped a substantial reward for his efforts, not least in Florida. The Democratic Party, once the ultimate “rainbow coalition”, has thus lost its hold on female electors and its dominance over a rapidly expanding ethic minority. As a result, it no longer controls either the White House, Senate or House of Representatives.

One damning statistic illustrates the long-term decline of that party. Mr Bush won 51 per cent of the national vote on Tuesday. Every other Republican elected since the Great Depression (Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and George Bush Sr) has also succeeded in reaching that level of support in at least one of their presidential victories.

Yet since the death of Franklin Roosevelt almost 50 years ago, just a single Democrat (Lyndon Johnson in 1964) has exceeded 51 per cent of the popular vote in any presidential contest. It will take rather more than prayer for the party to recover from that utterly dire electoral record.

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