The
latest polling
by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press shows that Mitt Romney maintains a substantial lead nationally in the race for the GOP presidential
nomination. The survey, conducted Jan. 11-16, finds few differences among GOP
voters from various religious groups in terms of the candidate they would most
like to see get their party’s nomination.1
Romney
is currently the preferred nominee of 31% of Republican and Republican-leaning
registered voters; his support stands at 36% among white mainline Protestant
Republicans, 30% among white evangelicals and 27% among white Catholics. Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul and Rick Santorum all trail Romney and receive roughly equal
levels of support from Republican voters (16% for Gingrich, 15% for Paul, 14%
for Santorum). There are only small differences across religious groups in
support for these candidates, though support for Santorum is substantially higher
among evangelicals (22%) than among mainline Protestants (9%).
Republican
voters’ overall impression of Romney has changed little in the past few months;
56% of Republican and Republican-leaning registered voters expressed a
favorable view of Romney in November, and 55% say they have a favorable view of
him now.
But
there has been a significant increase over the past month in the number of
Republicans who see Romney as the candidate with the best chance of beating Barack Obama in the general election. In December, 28% of Republican voters said
Romney had the best odds of beating Obama while 35% thought Gingrich was the
most electable of the Republican candidates. In the most recent poll, the
percentage naming Romney as the most electable GOP candidate more than doubled
(from 28% in December to 58% now). The view that Romney is the most electable
of the Republican candidates has increased significantly among both evangelical
and mainline Protestant Republican voters; the December poll had too few Catholic
respondents for analysis.
In a potential
general election matchup between Romney and Obama, 50% of all registered
voters say they would vote for Obama while 45% support Romney. That is little
changed from November, when 49% supported Obama and 47% supported Romney.
Romney’s strongest
support in a matchup against Obama continues to come from evangelical voters;
three-quarters of evangelicals (76%) say they would vote for Romney, compared
with 19% who favor Obama. When this question was asked in November, 70% of
white evangelicals expressed support for Romney while 26% favored Obama.
Obama’s strongest
support among the religious groups analyzed comes from voters who are religiously
unaffiliated; nearly two-thirds of this group (64%) support Obama while 28%
prefer Romney. These figures are little changed over the past two months. (The
current poll included too few interviews with black Protestant registered
voters to permit analysis of their voting intentions.)
For a complete discussion of the survey’s findings, including an
analysis of the potential impact a Ron Paul third-party candidacy might have on
the general election, see “Unpopular Nationally, Romney Holds Solid GOP Lead: Paul Polls at 18% as
Third Party Candidate.”
Footnotes:
1 Data collection began before Huntsman and Perry announced they were leaving the race. (return to text)
© Brooks Kraft/Corbis