Most American voters want a deeply religious president, recent poll reveals_12604

Posted: 1/23/04

Most American voters want a deeply
religious president, recent poll reveals

By Adelle Banks

Religious News Service

WASHINGTON (RNS) — Almost 60 percent of likely voters surveyed say it's important for a president to believe in God and be deeply religious while also having the backing of most Americans on how he is managing the economy and foreign policy.

A new O'Leary Report/Zogby International Values Poll that looked at the political and ideological divisions in the nation showed significant support for personal religious involvement by the country's top leader.

Fifty-nine percent of those polled said having a president who is religious is more important to them than having one who is not religious, while 30 percent said the opposite.

In the poll's so-called “red states,” which were won by President Bush in 2000, the percentage is higher–67 percent–who favor having a religious president who also is considered to have done a good job managing foreign policy and the economy.

In those states–covering the South, Southwest and mountain West–23 percent favored a president who is not religious but had success on policy issues. In the "blue states," won by former Vice President Al Gore, the percentage in favor of a religious president was lower–51 percent.

In those states–the Northeast, the mid-Atlantic, the Great Lakes and the far West– 36 percent favored a president who was successful on policy matters but not necessarily deeply religious.

“It is ultimately very important for a presidential candidate to identify with a supreme being and with what are perceived to be family and church values,” said pollster John Zogby, whose Zogby International organization is based in Utica, N.Y.

He said that view is shaped by Americans' conservative or liberal tendencies, with born-again Christians viewing religion in absolute terms and mainline Protestants and liberal Catholics having a more live-and-let-live philosophy.

Brad O'Leary, a Republican strategist and pollster who commissioned the poll, said Democratic presidential hopeful Howard Dean is responding to the sentiment expressed in the poll that favors religious presidents. “I think you have Dean right now looking at his polling and seeing that his persona among the American public is not as a religious or deeply religious person,” said O'Leary, publisher of “The O'Leary Report” newsletter. “So all of a sudden, in the midst of this campaign in the last few days, he starts talking about his religion.”

An earlier poll also suggested an American comfort with religious rhetoric from political leaders. A July 2003 poll by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life and the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press found almost twice as many respondents thought there were too few references to prayer and religious faith by politicians than too much.

Forty-one percent said there was too little reference, compared to 21 percent who thought there was more than enough.