(Photo: AP / Seth Wenig)Presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani speaks during a fundraiser in New York, Wednesday, March 14, 2007. Giuliani is the current front-runner for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination.
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WASHINGTON – The latest poll measuring how religious Republicans would vote in the 2008 presidential election found that the highly religious are less likely to vote for Rudy Giuliani than are those who attend church less frequently.
Based on responses from 2,016 national adults, three recent USA Today/Gallup polls revealed 31 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning Independents who attend church weekly would support Giuliani, the current front-runner for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination. The Catholic presidential hopeful has more backing from those who attend church less frequently with 49 percent of Republicans who seldom or never attend church showing support.
Evangelical leader Richard Land, who heads the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, said in a radio broadcast last week that Giuliani's past two divorces, the second of which was messy, and his more liberal positions on social issues would prevent most evangelicals from supporting him.
Among Prostestants overall, however, the poll currently shows 39 percent prefer Giuliani. High support for the New York City mayor comes from Republican Catholics (51 percent).
Second in church support is Sen. John McCain, a Protestant. Highly religious Republicans are slightly more likely to support John McCain (24 percent) than are less religious Republicans. Former house speaker Newt Gingrich, who recently acknowledged he was having an extramarital affair even as he led the charge against President Clinton over the Monica Lewinsky affair, also has more backing from highly religious Republicans (13 percent) than the least religious (8 percent). Gingrich said there are times that he has "fallen short of God's standards" in an interview with Focus on the Family founder James Dobson.
The poll showed mixed support for Mitt Romney, a Mormon. Seven percent of Republicans who attend church weekly support him; and 8 percent of those who attend church nearly weekly or monthly show support along with 5 percent of those who seldom or never attend church.
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The lesser known Sen. Sam Brownback has support, although limited, entirely from highly religious Republicans (4 percent), the poll showed. Land had indicated that the Kansas senator already has social conservative backing but just needs to raise campaign funds and convince his supporters that he can win.
While the impact of religious voters is not expected to be as high for Democratic candidates, the poll found Sen. Hillary Clinton leads among all groups - from the highly religious Democrats to those who never attend church. Sen. Barack Obama follows with 23 percent backing from the highly religious, which is 11 percentage points below Clinton.
The surveys were conducted on Jan. 12-14, 2007, Feb. 9-11, 2007, and March 2-4, 2007.
