Gallup Analysis: Priorities and Concerns of Religious White Americans

GALLUP NEWS SERVICE

PRINCETON, NJ -- White Americans who are personally religious have formed a core constituency of the Republican Party in recent years. This group is much more likely than nonreligious whites to identify with the Republican Party and vote for Republican candidates. Republican strategists have taken advantage of this fact and have focused a good deal of their now-famous "get out the vote" efforts on direct communication with religious whites, using a wide variety of communication channels.

One might assume that the subgroup of religious white Americans so heavily courted by the GOP would be focused on moral and values issues -- including concerns about liberalization of abortion, same-sex marriage, and stem-cell research policies -- were the Democrats to take control of Congress.

A review of recent open-ended data indicates that religious whites are not much different from all other Americans in terms of what their priorities are for government and the White House.

Religious whites who favor the Republicans to keep control of Congress, however, are significantly more likely than nonreligious whites to say they worry about moral and values policies that would be enacted if the Democrats take over Congress.

Priorities for Government

Americans were asked in Gallup's Oct. 23-26 poll to name their top priorities for Congress and the president to deal with. Assistant Editor Joseph Carroll has recently analyzed the general results (see Related Items).

But for the purposes of this analysis, the question is: Do religious whites differ significantly from other whites and nonwhites in their priorities for government?

The data do not reflect major differences among these groups. The priorities religious whites have for their government are basically little different from the priorities among all Americans. Iraq is the top priority among all three groups. The priorities that are next in line behind Iraq vary slightly across the three groups, and include the economy, immigration, healthcare, and education.

In your view, what one or two issues should be the top priorities for the president and Congress to deal with at this time?

Perhaps most importantly, this group of religious whites -- who in this sample are more than twice as likely to be Republican as Democrat in terms of party identification -- do not tend to list moral or values issues as their top priorities at all.

Here are the important points of analysis:

• Religious whites are slightly less focused on economic issues than others are.
  
  
• Religious whites are slightly less likely to mention Iraq, although it remains by far the top priority for this group.
  
  
• Religious whites are slightly more likely to mention illegal immigration as the top priority than are others.
  
  
• Only 2% of this group thinks that gay rights should be the government's top priority.
  
  
• Only 1% mention abortion.
  
  
• Only 1% mention ethical and moral decline.

Worry

The recent Gallup Panel survey also included a set of questions designed to measure the concerns of Americans if the party they do not favor wins control of Congress in Tuesday's elections. Gallup Senior Editor Lydia Saad recently analyzed these data (see Related Items).

This set of questions is particularly interesting in light of current Republican strategy focusing on activating conservatives' concerns about what would happen if the Democrats take control of Congress. It might be reasonable to assume that religious whites who want the Republicans to maintain control of Congress would be most concerned about what would happen in relationship to moral and values policies.

The table shown here reflects the open-ended responses to a question in which those favoring continued Republican control of Congress were asked what they worry about most if the Democrats take control of Congress.

These concerns and worries can be grouped as follows:

From this more general perspective, it can be seen that economic issues are the biggest broad worry those favoring Republicans have if their side does not win, followed by Iraq, moral issues, a concern that nothing will get done, and national security and terrorism.

There are, however, some significant differences among the two groups of whites as defined by church attendance.

Moral issues are tied with economic concerns as the top worries of frequent churchgoing whites, followed closely by Iraq. On the other hand, whites who are infrequent churchgoers but who want the GOP to control Congress are much less likely to cite moral issues as their worry if the Democrats take over. Instead, these Americans are worried about economic issues and then Iraq.

Nine percent of the religious whites who favor the Republicans worry about a Democratic-controlled Congress becoming too liberal, 7% are worried about abortion becoming more acceptable, 6% worry about a general moral decline if the Democrats win, and 4% are worried about gay rights legislation. All of these are at least slightly higher than the parallel percentages of mentions by whites who favor the Republicans but who do not attend church frequently.

Survey Methods

Results for this panel study are based on telephone interviews with 1,001 national adults, aged 18 and older, conducted Oct. 23-26, 2006. Respondents were randomly drawn from Gallup's nationally representative household panel, which was originally recruited through random selection methods. For results based on the total sample of national adults, one can say with 95% confidence that the maximum margin of sampling error is ±3 percentage points. In addition to sampling error, question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of public opinion polls.

2. In your view, what one or two issues should be the top priorities for the president and Congress to deal with at this time?

(Asked of adults who say country would be better off if Republicans controlled Congress) How worried are you about what would happen if the Democratic Party wins control of Congress after this fall's elections -- very worried, somewhat worried, not too worried, or not worried at all?

BASED ON 435 ADULTS WHO SAY THE COUNTRY WOULD BE BETTER OFF IF THE REPUBLICANS CONTROLLED CONGRESS

(Asked of adults who say they are worried about what would happen if the Democrats win control of Congress after this fall's elections) What, in particular, are you worried will happen if the Democrats win control of Congress? [OPEN-ENDED]

(Asked of adults who say country would be better off if Democrats controlled Congress)How worried are you about what would happen if the Republican Party keeps control of Congress after this fall's elections -- very worried, somewhat worried, not too worried, or not worried at all?

BASED ON 501 ADULTS WHO SAY THE COUNTRY WOULD BE BETTER OFF IF THE DEMOCRATS CONTROLLED CONGRESS

10. (Asked of adults who they are worried about what would happen if the Republicans keep control of Congress after this fall's elections)What, in particular, are you worried will happen if the Republicans keep control of Congress? [OPEN-ENDED]

BASED ON 485 ADULTS WHO ARE WORRIED ABOUT WHAT WOULD HAPPEN IF THE REPUBLICANS KEEP CONTROL OF CONGRESS AFTER THIS FALL'S ELECTIONS