Poll: Monthly churchgoers swing toward Obama

From USA Today:

Significantly more monthly churchgoers are supporting the Democratic nominee — Sen. Barack Obama — in this year's presidential election than in the 2004 election cycle, according to a new poll.

Voters who attend religious services one to two times a month are supporting the Democratic nominee by 60%, up from 49% who supported Sen. John Kerry in 2004, based on a survey released Oct. 8 by the nonpartisan group Faith in Public Life.

"The fact that he's getting 60% of those voters shows that there has been a movement overall in the last four years in terms of Democratic outreach with religious Americans," said Amy Sullivan, whose book The Party Faithful examines Democrats' outreach to religious voters.

"That might be related more to economic issues than anything else this year, but it does show that religious voters are willing to vote for Democrats."

Exit polls in 2004 showed Bush won 51% of the vote among monthly churchgoers.

Sen. John McCain has 34% of the vote of monthly churchgoers in the survey, but maintains a significant advantage among voters who attend church more frequently. Obama has a similar advantage over McCain among those who attend less often.

"We took a look at one of the historically ... strongest predictors of votes and that's religious attendance," said Robert Jones, president of Public Religion Research and lead researcher and analyst for the poll.

The survey also found evidence of a generational divide between younger and older evangelicals, including support by younger evangelicals for a more active government and less conservative views on same-sex marriage.

"They (evangelicals) are more concerned about peace and prosperity than they are about abortion or same-sex marriage," said Michael Lindsay, associate professor of sociology at Rice University. "This is why things are different in 2008 than they were in 2004."

The survey polled 2,000 adults, and an additional 1,250 adults ages 18 to 34, and was conducted between Aug. 28 and Sept. 19. The margin of error for the overall sample was plus or minus 2.5 percentage points; the margin of error among younger adults was plus or minus 3 percentage points.

Sunday, October 12, 2008