Poll Shows Pro-Life Presidential Outreach Should be Directed at Churches

National   |   Steven Ertelt   |   Jul 9, 2008   |   9:00AM   |   WASHINGTON, DC

Poll Shows Pro-Life Presidential Outreach Should be Directed at Churches

RSS Newsfeed Email article
Add to My Yahoo! Printer friendly

by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
July 9
, 2008

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) — A new Gallup poll finds religious Americans of every denominational stripe are more likely to support John McCain than Barack Obama. With most pro-life Americans belonging to a religious group, the poll should be an encouraging sign to pro-life groups looking to support McCain for president.

Americans who say religion is an important part of their daily lives support the pro-life candidate McCain over the pro-abortion canddiate Obama on a 50 to 40 percent margin.

Those who don’t back Obama over McCain 55% to 36%.

The results come from Gallup daily poll tracking of almost 95,000 Americans from March through June.

About two-thirds of American registered voters respond in the affirmative when asked whether religion is important to their daily lives.

Among white evangelicals, the McCain-Obama split moves from 63-27 percent for McCain for those who value their religious views to 46-45 percent for those who don’t. The Catholic split moves from 53-37 percent for McCain to 47-45 percent for Obama in the same groups.

While Gallup found support for McCain in traditional camps like white evangelical voters and Catholics, other groups who are also more religious also support McCain in higher margins than those who are not.

"Indeed, the relationship between religiosity and vote choice is apparent among other groups that may not have been thought of in this regard traditionally, including in particular American Jews and, to a slight degree, those who identify with non-Christian and non-Jewish religions," Gallup says in the poll analysis.

Hispanic Catholics who value religion are six percent less likely to back Obama over their less religious counterparts, black Catholics are two percent less likely, and Jewish Americans are 23 percent less likely.

Even non-Christians and non-Jews who value religion are less likely to support Obama than their more secular counterparts — by eight percent. Nonreligious Americans are four percent less likely.

For the pro-life community, Gallup concludes that what has worked in the past for pro-life outreach for pro-life presidential candidates will likely work again. And that’s heading to churches to sign up people to register to vote and then turning out churchgoers on election day.

"It has been well established from an analysis of previous survey data that certain groups of highly religious Christians … are reliable in their presidential vote preferences," Gallup says.

"Those who report that religion is important in their daily lives are significantly more likely to report voting for McCain over Obama than are those who say religion is not important," it concludes.

Sign Up for Free Pro-Life News From LifeNews.com

Daily Pro-Life News Report Twice-Weekly Pro-Life
News Report
Receive a free daily email report from LifeNews.com with the latest pro-life news stories on abortion, euthanasia and stem cell research. Sign up here. Receive a free twice-weekly email report with the latest pro-life news headlines on abortion, euthanasia and stem cell research. Sign up here.