Thursday, July 26, 2012

Religion statistics reinforce what we know


I typed up a draft brief that didn't make it into the RNS budget today, so I figured I'd post it here. The latest Pew poll shows that religion largely does not matter, because people are already firm in their convictions. This doesn't exactly support the idea that the economy is the election issue par excellence, but I think that's a pretty widespread - if not accurate - truth right now.

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Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s religion will not hold him back in November, according to the Pew Research Center’s latest national survey.

 The poll found little voter discomfort with Romney’s Mormon faith, even though 61 percent said it is “very different” from their own beliefs.

Six in ten voters correctly identified Romney’s religion as Mormon, nearly unchanged since the March GOP primaries. The majority of voters say either they are comfortable with Romney’s religion or that it does not matter to them, indicating his faith will have little impact in November.

White evangelicals and Republicans were found to overwhelmingly favor Romney over Obama – regardless of their feelings toward Romney’s faith.

Meanwhile, fewer voters correctly identified President Barack Obama’s faith – and more got it wrong – than before his election in 2008. Only 49 percent of Americans polled correctly identified Obama’s Christian faith. This is an 11-point improvement since 2010, but still below 2008 levels, when 55 percent correctly identified his religion,

Obama was incorrectly identified as Muslim by 17 percent of the population, a 2-percentage-point drop from 2008. Conservative Republicans were especially likely to believe this.

Despite a widespread view that it is important for a president to have strong religious beliefs, a sizable number of voters do not know Obama’s or candidate Romney’s religion.

One-third of voters said they did not know each candidate’s religion.

The report concluded there is little evidence to suggest that concerns about the candidates’ respective faiths will have a meaningful impact in the fall elections.

A July 24 report found most voters say they already know enough about both candidates.