Highly Religious Republicans Less Likely to Support Giuliani

GALLUP NEWS SERVICE

PRINCETON, NJ -- Highly religious Republicans, defined as those who attend church weekly, are significantly less likely to support Rudy Giuliani for their party's nomination than are those who attend church less frequently. Giuliani, who himself is Catholic, gets higher levels of support from Catholic Republicans than from Republicans who are Protestant. Church attendance makes little difference in the candidate preferences of Democrats. Among Democrats, Barack Obama does slightly better among Protestants than among Catholics.

These conclusions are based on an aggregated analysis of three recent Gallup Poll presidential preference surveys: Jan. 12-14, 2007, Feb. 9-11, 2007, and March 2-4, 2007. Even with these combined samples, however, sample sizes in some religious subgroups remain relatively small.

Religious Intensity and Support for Candidates

The relationship between religious intensity and support for presidential candidates has been a significant factor in recent elections, mainly among Republicans. John McCain's poor showing among religious voters contributed to his defeat in the 2000 South Carolina Republican primary, and ultimately derailed his chances of winning the GOP nomination. George W. Bush's success in winning the presidency in 2000 and 2004 was in part predicated on a campaign strategy of increasing turnout among the religious Republican right.

The religion factor has already been raised in the early stages of the 2008 presidential campaign in relationship to the impact of the candidates' histories and positions on support among more religious subgroups of the electorate. This has been particularly the case in terms of the candidacy of Rudy Giuliani, twice divorced and Catholic. Richard Land, the head of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, was recently quoted as calling Giuliani's divorce from his second wife as a "divorce on steroids" and saying that his candidacy would be "an awfully hard sell" for evangelical Christians.

To investigate the hypothesis that Giuliani is having trouble with more religious Republicans, we combined two recent USA Today/Gallup polls, Feb. 9-11, 2007 and March 2-4, 2007, in which Republicans were asked about their support for the GOP nomination.

There is no agreed-upon definition of "evangelical" among survey researchers, but Gallup analysis has shown that church attendance stands as an excellent broad measure of religious intensity. To that end, the analysis broke Republicans into three sub-groups: 1) Those who attend church weekly, 2) Those who attend church nearly every week or monthly, and 3) Those who seldom or never attend church.

The support levels for the major Republican candidates (any candidate who received 2% or more of the overall vote in this sample) crossed by this religious categorization is as follows:

It is clear that Rudy Giuliani in fact does receive a lower percentage of the vote from highly religious Republicans than he does among those who attend church less frequently.

At the same time, religious Republicans are only slightly more likely to support John McCain or Newt Gingrich than are less religious Republicans, though neither difference is statistically significant. Religious Republicans are also slightly more likely to indicate support for conservative candidate, Sam Brownback. (In fact, all of Brownback's very limited support comes from this highly religious group).

All in all, Giuliani is still the top candidate among religious Republicans, but leads John McCain by only seven percentage points among this group. Giuliani's lead among less religious Republicans is much larger -- 28 points among those who attend church nearly every week or monthly, and 27 points among those who seldom or never attend church.

Little Difference Among Democrats

There has been much less discussion of the impact of highly religious voters on support for Democratic candidates for president. A Gallup analysis of the relationship between church attendance and support for Democratic candidates -- shown in the table below -- indicates that there is in fact little significant relationship between the two. The aggregated polls from Jan. 12-14, 2007, Feb. 9-11, 2007, and March 2-4, 2007, shows Hillary Clinton leads among all three groups by margins ranging from 11 to 16 points.

Religious Identification

Among the three major candidates for the Republican nomination, Giuliani is Catholic, McCain is Protestant, and Romney is Mormon. Therefore, it may not be surprising to find that Giuliani does better among Catholics than among Protestants or those with other religious preference or no religious identity at all. (Giuliani may also do less well among Protestants because they disproportionately tend to be the more religious voters analyzed in the previous section.)   

The bottom line: Giuliani beats John McCain by an overwhelming 32 percentage points among Republican Catholics, but by 16 points among Protestants.

There is no statistical difference in the level of support for other major candidates by religious identity. Tommy Thompson is a Catholic and Sam Brownback is a converted Catholic, but neither does better among Catholic Republicans than among other Republicans. Newt Gingrich is Protestant, but again, there is no major difference across these religious categories in his support.

The Democratic Situation

All of the major candidates for the Democratic nomination for president are Protestant: Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Al Gore, and John Edwards. Three other Democratic candidates currently drawing minimal support -- Joe Biden, Bill Richardson, and Wesley Clark -- are Catholics.

Regardless of the religious identities of these candidates, there is little variation in choice of a candidate among Democrats based on the voters' personal religious identification. Barack Obama does slightly better among Protestant Democrats than among Catholic Democrats. Al Gore does slightly better among "all others" than among those who are Protestant or Catholic.

Hillary Clinton wins by margins between 12 and 21 percentage points among all three of these groups.

Survey Methods

Results are based on telephone interviews with 2,016 national adults, aged 18 and older, conducted Jan. 12-14, 2007, Feb. 9-11, 2007, and March 2-4, 2007. For results based on the total sample of national adults, one can say with 95% confidence that the maximum margin of sampling error is ±2 percentage points. The margin of sampling error for each individual subgroup presented in the tables above varies depending on the sample size involved, but is always higher than the sampling error for the total sample. 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.