Mississippi and Alabama hold their Republican primaries next week. These two states are two of the three most religious states in the union (the third is Utah). The high level of religiosity in Mississippi and Alabama should benefit Rick Santorum, everything else being equal.
The data in the table below are based on our Feb. 27-March 4 weekly average of Republican registered voters nationwide. During this time period, Romney led Santorum overall by 36% to 23%, which is very similar to where he is today in our latest five-day average.
But, and this is the key, note that among weekly-church-attending Republicans, Santorum is almost tied with Romney. Santorum's strength falls among those who attend church nearly weekly or monthly, and then falls some more among those who seldom or never attend church. In fact, among this latter group, Santorum is a full 22 percentage points behind Romney.
So, Santorum's ability to do well among frequent church attenders creates a positive context for his campaign when it comes to next week's GOP primary voting in Mississippi and Alabama. Here's why. In Alabama (using 2011 data), 55% of Republicans said they attended church on a weekly basis. In Mississippi, it was 56%.
Contrast that to two states in which Romney won convincingly on Super Tuesday -- Massachusetts, with a weekly church attending frequency among Republicans of only 31%, and Vermont, with an average church attending frequency of only 30% among Republicans. Ohio, which Romney barely won over Santorum by 1% of the vote on Tuesday, is in the middle, with a weekly church attendance figure of 44% among Republicans. And in Tennessee, where Santorum won fairly handily, the weekly church attending figure for Republicans is 55%, just about where it is for Mississippi and Alabama.
So the challenge for Romney is pretty clear. His top opponent Santorum's relatively strong appeal to regular church attending Republicans has had and may continue to have a powerful effect on the vote in certain highly religious states. Unfortunately for Romney, two of those states are up and coming this next week.
Of course, religiosity isn't the only variable that relates to voting among Republicans. Romney may well win in Alabama or Mississippi for reasons that override religion. Nevertheless, at this point in the ongoing saga of the GOP campaign, highly religious Republicans are, on a relative basis, disproportionately likely to support Rick Santorum.