Hillary Clinton does substantially better than Barack Obama with white Democratic voters who say they attend worship weekly or more, according to a new Gallup analysis. The differential among those voters is 57 percent to 29 percent, whereas among the occasional attenders and those who seldom or never darken the door of a place of worship, the percentages are 48-43 and 47-43. The significance of this finding is limited by the fact that frequent worshipers make up only 25 percent of the Democratic vote. The survey differentiates its sample by gender and age, yielding the notable result that the only group that provides a majority for Obama are seldom or never-worshiping men. It’s clear that the disproportionate tendency of old people to go to church accounts for a considerable part of Clinton’s success among the frequent attenders.
What’s missing, however, is a breakdown by denomination. My guess is that most of what’s going on here is the prevalence of Catholics among the frequent attenders. The exit polls certainly point in this direction. Older white Catholics are Clinton voters. Not much news there. Frequent attending white Protestants would be the interesting group to get a read on.