Religion figured in important and differing ways into the victories of John McCain and Hillary Clinton in this weeks’ New Hampshire primary.
On route to a five-percentage point win over Mitt Romney (37 percent to 32 percent), McCain assembled a broad religious coalition. He won pluralities of white Protestants (35 percent to 31 percent), Catholics (39 percent to 36 percent), and unaffiliated voters (38 percent to 24 percent), besting second-place Romney everywhere but especially among the unaffiliated. He edged his rivals among weekly worship attenders–and also won among those that never attend. He also finished first among those who claimed that the religious beliefs of candidates mattered a “great deal.”
McCain ran ahead or broke even with third-place Mike Huckabee in all religious groups. Interestingly—and as Mark noted earlier on this blog, self-described white “born again or evangelical Christians” divided their ballots almost evenly between the top three GOP candidates. So McCain managed to overcome the religious divisions that appeared in the Iowa GOP caucuses and are evident in national polls.
The religious differences among the top Democratic candidates were larger. Clinton enjoyed a solid advantage among white Catholics (45 percent to 26 percent) in her two-percentage point victory over Barack Obama and edged him among white Protestants as well (40 percent to 33 percent). Obama prevailed among those with no religious affiliation (45 percent to 29 percent). John Edwards trailed behind in all these religious groups, doing best among Catholics and least well among Protestants.
Most interestingly, Obama did better than Clinton among both the most and the least religiously observant voters (a little like McCain, but with less success). Weekly worship attenders voted for him over Clinton 37 percent to 32 percent, and so did those who said they never attend worship, 39 percent to 35 percent. Obama’s strong support among younger voters, who are typically less observant, many be reflected in these numbers. The religious elements of Clinton’s coalition are reminiscent of John Kerry’s in the 2004 New Hampshire primary, while Obama’s may show traces of the broader coalition he assembled in the 2008 Iowa caucuses. I’ll toss the ball over to Mark for some further reflections on this.