Survey: Religion a key factor in presidential race

[rug]

Romney leads Obama among 'very religious'

5:31 AM EDT Apr 30, 2012

PORTLAND, Maine - A new poll is shedding some light on the role religion is playing in the upcoming presidential election.

According to a Gallup survey, President Barack Obama is enjoying a wide lead over Mitt Romney among moderately and less religious voters and Romney is dominating among very religious voters.

Among all likely voters, President Obama leads Romney by seven points.

Very religious voters, who say religion is a key part of daily life and who attend a house of worship almost every week or more often, account for 41 percent of voters and back Romney over Obama by 54 to 37 percent, Gallup found.

http://www.wmtw.com/news/maine/Survey-Religion-a-key-factor-in-presidential-race/-/8792012/12216376/-/8bda0e/-/index.html

If this poll is accurate, there is still the question of causation and coincidence.

Are they conservative because they're religious or are they religious because they're conservative?

Or are they making electoral choices for other reasons having little to do with religion?

[get the red out]

1. Nope, it's religion

They are good little soldiers and vote the way they are told.

[struggle4progress]

2. I ran the numbers from the Gallup page: there are more Obama supporters

among the "very religious" (15.17) than among the "moderately religious" (14.58), and more Obama supporters among the "very or moderately religious" (29.75) than among the "not religious" (19.52)

As a double check, I computed from the religiosity numbers Obama 49.27 to Romney 42.54 which matches Gallup's numbers here: http://www.gallup.com/poll/154091/Obama-Job-Approval-Leads-Romney.aspx

Here's the Gallup religiosity page
http://www.gallup.com/poll/154097/Religiousness-Key-Factor-Romney-Obama-Support.aspx

Hard for me to know what this means: one component may be that various conservatives are more likely to self-report as very religious

[cbayer]

3. This is coming up pretty consistently.

I think it's back to the abortion and GLBT civil rights issues, as usual. I am not surprised that the strongly religious will vote for Romney, but I bet they'll be holding their collective noses when they do so.