What the Christian Coalition Voters Guide Actually Was
The Christian Coalition voters guide was an annual publication produced by the Christian Coalition of America, founded by Pat Robertson in 1989. It was designed to help evangelical and conservative Christian voters evaluate political candidates based on their positions on issues the organization considered morally significant. The guide typically covered the upcoming election cycle and rated candidates from A to F, sometimes using a more detailed letter-grade system across multiple categories. It was distributed through churches, mailed to subscribers, and made available at rallies and events. The format was usually a short booklet or single-sheet rating for each race. Most people used it as a quick reference rather than a deeply researched evaluation tool. I remember working with one of the earlier print editions back in the mid-1990s — the paper was cheap, the layout was cramped, and they were always rushing to hit the printers before the primaries started. That meant mistakes happened. I caught a couple where the candidate's name was misspelled or the wrong photo was paired with a candidate's rating. They had a hotline you could call to report errors, which was about as high-tech as their feedback loop got.
How to Find and Use a Christian Coalition Voters Guide
The Christian Coalition Voters Guide itself is no longer actively published in its original form, since the organization effectively went dormant around 2004–2005 after financial troubles and leadership changes. Pat Robertson sold the organization, and it was eventually absorbed into other conservative groups. The original voter guides from the 1990s and early 2000s are mostly found in archives now. If you are looking for physical copies, eBay and old mission surplus websites occasionally have them. Digital scans exist in some library collections and conservative history archives online. For someone actually trying to use a guide like this in a modern context, here is the straightforward part: the methodology they used was based on questionnaires sent to candidates. Candidates would respond to a set of position questions — usually around 10 to 20 — and the coalition would assign grades based on how closely those answers aligned with their stated platform. The grading wasn't blind. They knew who was answering. That is an important detail people often miss because it introduces a self-selection bias. Candidates who refused to answer or gave vague responses were often still given a grade, sometimes a low one, simply for not engaging. I ran into a specific problem when I was compiling historical election materials a few years ago. A local historical society wanted the 1996 voter guide ratings for a state legislative race, but the copy they had was missing the pages for two incumbents. I found the gap because the binding was loose and three interior sheets had separated. The workaround was to locate the same guide in the library of congress digital collection, which had a complete scan. I cross-referenced the ratings by candidate name and race, not just page number, because pagination varied slightly between print runs. It took about 40 minutes instead of the two hours I had estimated.
Understanding the Grading Methodology
The grading system was relatively simple on the surface but had nuances that mattered in practice. The coalition typically used an A-through-F scale across issue categories such as abortion, family policy, religious liberty, education, and crime. Each category represented a cluster of positions derived from the organization's official policy platform. Candidates were rated per category and then given an overall rating. The overall rating was not a strict mathematical average — it was more of a judgment call based on how many categories fell into each grade bracket. One thing that catches people off guard is that the Christian Coalition did not release the raw questionnaire data alongside the grades. They released the final ratings and a brief summary of the candidate's stated position. This means you cannot independently verify how a grade was calculated unless you have access to the original questionnaire responses, which are not publicly archived in most cases. I have seen people treat these guides as objective scorecards. They are not. They are advocacy documents with a letter-grade veneer. The underlying criteria were fixed — the coalition's platform never really changed — but the interpretation of a candidate's answer was entirely internal. Another nuance is that the guide only rated candidates who chose to participate. In many races, especially lower-profile ones, the coalition would rate only the candidates who responded to their questionnaire. Non-respondents were either not listed at all or listed with no rating. This created a distorted picture. A race might show five candidates with grades, but if one major candidate declined to answer, the guide effectively told voters nothing about that person's positions. I once watched a local advocacy group cite a coalition guide to claim a candidate had a "D" rating, when in reality that candidate had refused to answer the questionnaire and simply wasn't included in the publication at all. The distinction matters because it changes how you interpret the absence of a rating.
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Common Pitfalls When Using These Guides
There are several ways people mess this up. The biggest one is assuming the guide covers every race. It did not. The Christian Coalition focused on federal races — president, Senate, House — and selectively covered state-level races depending on where they had active chapters and resources. Down-ballot races like county commissioner or school board were almost never included. If you are trying to use this for a local election, you are going to be disappointed. A second pitfall is treating a single year's guide as authoritative across multiple cycles. The coalition's platform shifted subtly over time, especially in the late 1990s when they broadened their focus to include some economic and foreign policy issues alongside their core social agenda. A candidate who got an A in 1994 might have gotten a B in 1996 if their position had evolved or if the coalition's weighting of certain issues had changed. Do not extrapolate ratings across years without checking the methodology notes in each edition. The third pitfall is not checking the date on the guide. I have seen people share scans of the 1992 guide in 2020 discussions as if they were current. The content is historical at that point. Candidate positions change. Careers change. A rating from 1992 tells you almost nothing about a candidate's positions in 2020, even if the same person is running again. Use old guides for historical context, not for current electoral decisions.
Alternatives to the Christian Coalition Voters Guide
If you want something with a similar purpose but more transparency and broader coverage, there are better options available today. Vote Smart offers nonpartisan candidate profiles with position data pulled from public records, surveys, and official statements. They do not assign letter grades, which some people find less helpful, but the underlying information is more accessible and verifiable. The League of Women Voters also publishes candidate questionnaires and guides that tend to be more comprehensive and methodologically consistent than what the Christian Coalition produced. For issue-specific voting guides, organizations like KnowYourVote or Ballotpedia provide searchable databases where you can match your own positions against candidate responses. These do not have an ideological slant in the same way. That is not necessarily better — it depends on what you are looking for — but they are more useful if you want to do your own evaluation rather than relying on a pre-packaged grade. The Christian Coalition guide was a product of its time. It was influential in the 1990s because it gave conservative Christians a simple, readable tool to navigate elections. It was not rigorous by modern standards. It is not available in an updated form. But for anyone studying that era of political organizing or looking for historical context on how evangelical voters were mobilized, the original guides are still worth tracking down. Just read them with the understanding that they are advocacy materials, not neutral scoring systems.
