Here's an interesting article about a study done with the Baylor data. The authors conclude that the color of one's church strongly influences one's voting behavior, especially if the candidates are of different races/ ethnic groups. The data come from a survey conducted during the primary season, and it's interesting to see the advantage that Obama had over Clinton with church-goers.
Here's an excerpt from it:
"One of the most powerful predictors of voting behavior is the color of the church they (voters) came out of,” said Dougherty, who specializes in the study of religion, race and ethnicity. “It’s really a startling thing.”
Baylor survey findings
| All Americans (n=1,648) | Clinton voters (n=389) | Obama voters (n=212) | McCain voters (n=104) | Romney voters (n=87) | |
| Are “very religious” | 32% | 21% | 28% | 35% | 50% |
| Attend church weekly | 30% | 19% | 24% | 41% | 42% |
| “Evangelical” describes him/her “very well” | 14% | 5% | 5% | 21% | 16% |
| Read Bible weekly | 23% | 13% | 25% | 25% | 35% |
| Pray daily | 49% | 44% | 44% | 59% | 68% |
| Believe Bible is literal | 22% | 14% | 17% | 25% | 27% |
| Self-reported atheist | 4% | 5% | 6% | 3% | 0% |
| Is “very certain” he/she is going to heaven | 30% | 19% | 27% | 24% | 40% |
| All Americans (n=1,648) | Clinton voters (n=389) | Obama voters (n=212) | McCain voters (n=104) | Romney voters (n=87) | |
| “Most evil in the world is caused by the devil” | 43% | 33% | 39% | 56% | 61% |
| “My religious views are often ridiculed by media” | 30% | 13% | 21% | 33% | 47% |
| “Science and religion are incompatible” | 17% | 19% | 20% | 13% | 13% |
| “Gov’t should enforce strict separation of church, state” | 51% | 61% | 57% | 43% | 35% |
| “Success of the U.S. is part of God’s plan” | 31% | 23% | 31% | 39% | 57% |
Sociologists and ethnographers have long decried 11 a.m. Sunday as “the most segregated hour of the week” in America, he said. But the Baylor study seems to put teeth into those words, quantifying what the potential impact of such social segregation might be."
Thanks Jim for the link!
2 comments:
These tables don't support your conclusions, since they don't tell us the "color of the church" that the respondents come from. Do you have some other tables that you were looking at?
Just eyeballing what is here, it seems to me that the greater religiosity of Obama vs. Clinton voters could be accounted for by the fact that African Americans are more religious than whites, and Obama primary voters as a group probably had a higher percentage of black voters than Clinton's.
Oops, I posted the wrong tables (or wrong discussion from the article). Thanks for catching that!
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