Romney's Deficit Among Highly Religious Republicans

Wisconsin Republicans are slightly less religious than the average Republican across the nation. Exactly 40% of Wisconsin Republicans in 2011 reported attending church weekly (based on Gallup's Daily tracking). The national average is 44%. Republicans in Maryland and the District of Columbia are even less religious, with 38% and 29% weekly church attendance, respectively.

These three entities (two states, one district) are, of course, the ones in which GOP primary voting is taking place today (April 3). The relatively low level of religiosity among all three should work to Romney's advantage. That's because Santorum has consistently done best in states with the highest percentage of weekly church attending Republicans -- states like Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Louisiana. And, more generally, as I will get into below, Romney has a real weakness among highly religious Republicans.

Of course, Romney doesn't have to worry about D.C., where Santorum isn't on the ballot. In Maryland, the few polls that have been conducted show Romney with a very large lead. Which leaves Wisconsin, the state getting most of the attention today.

In addition to the fact that the Badger State's Republicans are below average in religiousness, we also find that Wisconsin has more Republican Catholics than the average state. More specifically, 36% of Wisconsin Republicans are Catholic, way above the national average of 21% of Republicans who are Catholic. That leaves 53% of Wisconsin Republicans who are Protestant. Only .5% are Mormon.

As I've discussed, Santorum has not been able to capitalize on his personal Catholicism as far as voting is concerned. In fact, Romney does better with Catholics than Santorum. So the religious composition of the Republican electorate in Wisconsin, taken as a whole, should benefit Romney (even taking into account that there are very few Mormons in the state).

Maryland's Republicans are 28% Catholic by the way, and D.C.'s Republicans are 27% Catholic. What's interesting is that D.C. has a very high percentage of Republicans -- 20% to be exact -- who are "nones"; that is, they say they don't have a formal religious identity. That compares to 9% of the overall GOP population in the country. But again, Romney is poised to pick up DC's delegates regardless.

Overall, Romney appears to be strengthening his position nationally as the choice of Republicans to be their party's nominee. Romney's overall percentage of Republican support for last week (March 26-April 1) was 42%, his highest weekly percentage since we began tracking. His gap over Santorum last week was 16 percentage points.

Romney beat Santorum last week by a two-point edge, 37% to 35%, among weekly church going Republicans, the first time he's been even slightly ahead among that group since late February/early march. Romney beats Santorum among those who are less religious by huge margins: 29 points among those who attend almost weekly or monthly, and 27 points among those who seldom or never attend. Clearly church-going remains a variable which has a very strong inverse relationship to Republican support for Romney. This is ironic, since, by many measures, Romney is probably one of the most religious GOP candidates in recent history.

Is Romney's weak positioning among weekly church-going Republicans due to his Mormon religion?

My colleague Lydia Saad's analysis of Gallup data from last summer showed that church attendance was not a strong predictor of respondents' views on voting for a Mormon for president. And, although the sample sizes are small, my analysis shows that weekly church-going Republicans are less likely than average to say they would not vote for Mormon for president. So I can't find strong evidence that Romney's poorer performance among highly religious Republicans in these primaries is due to his Mormonism. More likely it's due to the perception among highly religious Republicans that Santorum better represents their views on family and values issues.

More broadly, assuming he is the nominee, Romney has his work cut out for him. At the national level, our latest poll shows Romney is trailing Obama by four points among registered voters. This is actually indicative of a close race, given that Romney would probably perform better among registered voters who actually turn out to vote. In 12 key swing states, Obama does better, beating Romney by nine points overall.