President-elect Barack Obama’s effort to swing religious voters his way and close the God gap with Republicans worked.

While he did not win every religious group of voters, he made gains from each compared with the 2004 election, exit polls reveal. He swept some by impressive numbers, and he gained notably among young evangelicals, who have been Republican stalwarts.

Since the 2004 election, political commentators noted Republicans’ winning numbers among religious voters, leaving gaps between Republicans and Democrats.

“The gaps worked in the advantage for Senator Obama, as opposed to 2004, when the gaps worked in favor of George W. Bush,” said John Green, senior fellow in religion and American politics at the Pew Forum on Religious & Public Life, a nonprofit, nonpartisan study group.

Minorities who identified themselves as religious heavily supported Obama. Sixty-six percent of Hispanic Roman Catholics voted for him, up from the 53 percent that voted Democrat in 2004.

John White, professor of politics at The Catholic University of America in Washington, said he believes that shift occurred in part because of Republicans’ hard line on immigration.

Among Asians, 61 percent went for Obama. Jews supported him by a whopping 78 percent margin. Black Protestants came in even higher at 95 percent.

McCain carried white Catholics 52 percent to 47 percent, but Obama narrowed the margin of loss by 5 percent from the 2004 election.

A majority of white evangelicals voted for McCain, 74 percent, but that also is down 5 percent from Bush’s numbers. Much of the movement came from evangelical voters 18 to 29 years old. Thirty-two percent of them voted for Obama.

In Georgia, 87 percent of voters who identified themselves as evangelical or born-again of all ages voted for McCain.

Still, Obama’s ease in talking about his faith seemed to pay off. He hired several staffers, including evangelicals, early to reach out to religious groups.

At the same time, broadened concerns among the faithful spurred religious organizations such as Sojourners of Washington, which promoted them and attracted moderates and younger religious voters.

The push went beyond opposition to abortion and gay rights, issues that defined the old religious right.

Kimberly Knight, an Emory student and organizer of the Progressive Christian Cooperative in Atlanta, said the new religious coalition is also concerned about poverty, the environment, nuclear disarmament, immigration and international issues such as genocide in Darfur and the spread of AIDS.

“A large part of what I’m sensing is that Christian progressives and moderates, too, are no longer content allowing conservative Christians to define what it means to be people of faith in America,” she said.

Jonathan Merritt, a young Southern Baptist speaker and writer from Gwinnett County, has traveled the country and speaks to evangelicals from various denominations.

“Almost across the board there was support for Obama, or lack of support for McCain, with almost a quiet hope that Obama would win,” Merritt said.

When a Southern Baptist divinity professor sent out an e-mail before the election saying that faithful Christians could not vote for Obama, students responded via e-mail challenging the assumption.

Merritt said he thinks the professor’s e-mail shook many students and former students out of their quiet support for Obama. That is different from the previous decade when conservative Christians who supported Democrats would keep quiet for fear of being shunned, he said.

Despite the differences between young and old, Merritt senses there is some common ground.

“I think there is general relief that we can put Bush behind us, regardless of who is in the White House,” Merritt said.