Americans’ religious intensity continues to be a major predictor of party identification. A new analysis of more than 29,000 interviews Gallup conducted in November finds that Republicans outnumber Democrats by 12 percentage points among Americans who are classified as highly religious, while Democrats outnumber Republicans by 30 points among those who are not religious.
The current analysis is based on 29,192 interviews conducted as part of Gallup Daily tracking during the month of November. Party identifiers include those who initially identify with one of the two major parties plus independents who, in a follow-up question, say they lean toward one party or the other.
Gallup has developed the religious segments based on responses to questions measuring the personal importance of religion and church attendance. Details on the classification process are available at the end of this story.
“As was the case with party identification, whites who are highly religious are more than twice as likely as those who are not religious to disapprove of Obama’s job performance, 65% to 32%, respectively.”
The basic relationship between religiosity and party identification is quite strong and quite straightforward. The percentage of Americans who identify with or lean toward the Republican Party drops from 49% among the highly religious to 26% among those who are not religious. The percentage who identify with or lean toward the Democratic Party rises from 37% among the highly religious to 56% among those who are not religious.
For comparison, the party figures for November among all adults in these data are 40% Republicans/Republican leaners and 45% Democrats/Democratic leaners.
Thus, Republicans are in the plurality among highly religious Americans. For each of the other three groups, Democrats are equal with or higher in number than Republicans. The Democratic edge expands as religiosity decreases. Among the not-religious group, Democrats have a 30-point edge over Republicans.
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