Gallup: Religious Intensity Remains Powerful Predictor of Politics

By Daniel Miessler on December 13th, 2009: Tagged as Politics | Race | Religion
  • CarlM

    Without commenting (too much) on the meaning of the results of the poll, I'd like to comment on the format in which the results have been presented (Party Identification by Religiosity). It seems to me that it would be more useful to look at the results the other way around (Religiosity by Party Identification). It's not difficult to extract that information from this graph, but it requires a little work.

    For example, of the three choices for party affiliation, which has the highest percentage in the Not Religious category? What percentage in each affiliation fall into the Highly Religious category (or any of the other categories)?

    You might be interested to learn that the percentage of Black Republicans who are Highly Religious is the SAME as the percentage of Republicans in the full group who are highly religious.

    You might be interested to learn that over 40% of Republicans fall into the Less Religious and Not Religious categories and that over 40% of Democrats and over 40% of independents fall into the Highly Religious and Religious categories. This is true for the full group, for the Blacks, and for the Hispanics.

    I would dispute this conclusion: “for whites, religion is what determines political affiliation”. The data indicates that it is likely a factor not that it is what DETERMINES political affiliation.

  • CarlM

    Without commenting (too much) on the meaning of the results of the poll, I'd like to comment on the format in which the results have been presented (Party Identification by Religiosity). It seems to me that it would be more useful to look at the results the other way around (Religiosity by Party Identification). It's not difficult to extract that information from this graph, but it requires a little work.

    For example, of the three choices for party affiliation, which has the highest percentage in the Not Religious category? What percentage in each affiliation fall into the Highly Religious category (or any of the other categories)?

    You might be interested to learn that the percentage of Black Republicans who are Highly Religious is the SAME as the percentage of Republicans in the full group who are highly religious.

    You might be interested to learn that over 40% of Republicans fall into the Less Religious and Not Religious categories and that over 40% of Democrats and over 40% of independents fall into the Highly Religious and Religious categories. This is true for the full group, for the Blacks, and for the Hispanics.

    I would dispute this conclusion: “for whites, religion is what determines political affiliation”. The data indicates that it is likely a factor not that it is what DETERMINES political affiliation.


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