by Sigmund
The Public Religion Research Institute is a Washington based group that describes itself as “a nonprofit, nonpartisan, independent organization dedicated to research at the intersection of religion, values, and public life”. Amongst its activities is the collection of data regarding religious views and opinions of the general public in the US. They recently carried out a telephone poll of a random sample 1012 adults in the US that provides some interesting data on just how important the general public currently regards the religiosity of politicians.
It’s a very brief survey, with only a few questions asked – mainly concerning the knowledge of members of the public about the religion of potential candidates for the upcoming 2012 Presidential election, namely Barack Obama, Mitt Romney and Michele Bachmann.
The results are, unsurprisingly, that most people don’t have a good idea about the actual stated religion of any of the candidates (18%, for example, think Obama is Muslim – again, not a shock.)
The one result to note, however, is that of the question:
“How important is it for a candidate to have strong religious beliefs, regardless of whether those beliefs are the same as yours. Is it very important, somewhat important, not too important or not at all important?”
The results indicate that ‘very important’ and ‘somewhat important’ got the highest response (as expected for a US survey) with 30% and 26% respectively.
The surprising thing is that ‘not at all important’ is also 26%, with ‘not too important’ being 17%.
Considering that the USA public has in the past been shown a high importance in religiosity, particularly in regards its politicians, it is interesting that the proportion of the population that regards being religious is unimportant in a politician is currently not too far behind those who find it essential. With much higher levels of religiosity found in the elderly US population compared to the young it is not out of the question that European levels of disregard for religiosity might be on the cards within the next generation on simple demographic grounds alone.
When you say “it is not out of the question that European levels of disregard for religiosity might be on the cards” – would you think that may be one reason to fear the lunatic extreme religious & political groups who see themselves as living in the ‘end days’, or am I being overly concerned?
I mean that they may be more prepared to do crazy irrational things in the knowledge of declining religiosity, or see them as indicative of a ‘doomsday’ scenario…
The restrictive gun laws in most of Europe are, in part, designed to limit the opportunities for such violence – whether religiously inspired or not.
A telephone poll? I don’t doubt that those were pretty accurate onceaponnatime, but now? I have a strong suspicion that the likelihood of answering an unknown number is proportional to one’s age, and that gives me some optimism that the unimportant responders are underrepresented.
Or, to put it another way, it seems that it took them four days to find 100 people who would answer the phone + questions.
The polling was done by a reputable organization. RDD methodology ensures…well…the “random” piece. It doesn’t specify whether they used landline and cell phone databases and that can produce some skewing. The important thing is that they did weight for demographics and that statistically accounts for any concerns you might have regarding skewing. So, not only was the sample random, it was also stratified. The statistical margin of error is +/-3 points which is well within the error range for national stratified samples of this size.
It sounds good, but it only means for about ~40% of the population strong religious beliefs matters little or nothing as long as the religion isn’t theirs (based upon the wording of the question).
From the survey, I don’t think we can conclude that total lack of religious beliefs (ie. atheism) wouldn’t matter for these ~40%, or that strong religious beliefs in their religion (generally Christianity) wouldn’t be of import for them.
It certainly doesn’t mean that atheism is a non issue for a significant percentage. However the ‘badness’ of atheism in the minds of voters has a strong association with the importance they place on religion. If US attitudes to religiosity become similar to western European attitudes (and the attitude of the US younger generation IS much more similar)
then it is reasonable to conclude that fear of atheists will likely diminish, as it has in Europe.
I would’ve liked to see a question along the lines “How important is it to you that the candidate NOT have strong religious beliefs?”
Perhaps in a generation or two.
Hear Hear! If I were responding to the poll, I would want to register how scared I am of religious believers with their hands on power. Imagine having a President who actually believes that Joseph Smith is a prophet of God, the documented con-man who defrauded people of land and money and who served time in jail for fraud; the one who plagiarized from the Bible while hiding behind a curtain in his kitchen and pretending to recite from divine inspiration when dictating the book of mormon. This kind of deranged fantasy is a sign of a dangerous and unhealthy mind in my opinion. I have lived to see the first Black President, which was a great moment of joy. I hope I live to see the first openly atheist President!
Personally, I’d like to see them cut to the chase and ask questions such as:
How important is it to you that the candidate regularly eats bread which his spiritual leader has transformed into the body of his most beloved divine entity?
How important is it to you that the candidate wears specially-marked undergarments so he might gain protection from various forms of evil?
How important is it to you that the candidate keep the holiness of the most sacred day by participating in the public executions of those who violate it?
I know. Ain’t gonna happen. But it would if I were writing these polls…which is probably why I’m not….
Cheers,
b&
“How important is it for a candidate to have strong religious beliefs, regardless of whether those beliefs are the same as yours.”
Is there a possibility that Americans consider atheism to be a “strong religious belief”?
I was going to say, I don’t think that that question takes into account the possbility of non-belief. I think I would have had to answer “somewhat important”, because I would like to be able to vote for an atheist candidate. In the context of the poll, though, that would be lumped in with ‘religion is important’. If I were to say “not at all important”, then I would be saying I don’t care if a candidate is a religious nutjob. Maybe they should have asked more rather fewer questions.
The question seemed incoherent on that point. As an Atheist, one of the main reasons I would oppose either Bachmann or Romney is their insane religious beliefs, so I suppose I would have answered it very important, but its obviously not what it was trying to find out.
This is a BIG problem with virtually all polls. Many questions have deep ambiguities and there are insufficient responses available or information available to answer them accurately.
I pretty much decline to take part in polls anymore, it’s a waste of time and the structure of the questions gets the results they are looking for.
[however, some years ago I was tagged for a phone survey which was immediately identifiable from the questions as a self serving survey for an extreme fundie politician. So I took the survey just to throw some sand in the pot. In the end the poll taker asked my religious affiliation and when I told her I was an atheist, she said great… she’s an atheist too. A job is a job.]
They almost need another response for the question on how important it is for the candidate to have strong religious beliefs. Namely “I avoid voting for people with very strong religious beliefs”, as there is a big difference between finding it somewhat important, not important, and finding it to be a dangerous character flaw. I pretty much would never vote for someone that privileges their religion over all others, like the governor of Texas, for instance.
I would have answered “somewhat important” in that it’s something that I would count against a candidate. I would prefer a candidate who was not religious, just as I’m sure many religious voters would prefer a religious candidate. I don’t understand the rationale for the oft-made claim that a candidate’s religion shouldn’t matter. A candidate’s attitudes to evidence and supernaturalism matter to doing his/her job well.
If it is extremely important that a candidate have *NO* religion, then no response to that candidate+religion question is acceptable.
I can’t speak for the rest of Europe but here in the UK the kinds of ostentatious displays of religiosity that US politicians indulge in would wreck any chances of them getting elected here. Tony Blair kept his religious views pretty much to himself up to the time when he knew that he would not be seeking re-election.
If only, if only. I watched Rick Perry announcing his prayer rally ar Reliant Stadium and the smarmy bastard just about made me vomit.
While Article VI states that there can be no official religious test for holding public office, there still is one that’s applied by millions of superstitious voters.
“18%, for example, think Obama is Muslim – again, not a shock” I think it should be a shock. It means that nearly 20% of respondents are either stupid unable to comprehend the truth, or words for that matter, or willfully ignorant. I suppose they could also be lying too.
That’s disgusting. And scary that people remain this way and evidently want to remain this way.
“18%, for example, think Obama is Muslim – again, not a shock” I think it should be a shock.
It’s not a shock, because we know it already: it’s a popular lore among Tea Party supporters and other right-wing nutjobs. Interestingly, some of them believe that Obama is a Muslim and an atheist at the same time.
I’m more perplexed by people responding that they never heard of Romney or Bachmann (wait, maybe that’s a good thing!)
Eh, that’s not very surprising. For most of the Tea Partiers, “atheist” simply means “doesn’t believe in the One True Jesus.” Mormons and even Catholics might fall into that category.
Cheers,
b&
Off-topic:
Francis Collins decries ‘angry atheists’ in science
He would! He’s an angry religionist!
Yes, and then quotes a couple of extremely reasonable and measured comments from Pinker and Dawkins. Sooo not angry it’s rather funny.
I’m not a native English speaker, so I may be wrong about this, but in my understanding, the question “How important is it for a candidate to have strong religious beliefs?” assumes that a candidate’s religious beliefs will help win voters’ approval, and the inquiry is concerned only with the extent to which this is a factor. Just as if they asked “How important is it for a candidate to be smart/honest/energetic?” Injecting a hidden assumption (in this case, that religion is always a positive factor) into a poll question reminds me of the worst Communist practices (“Who is the greatest leader of our times and why Stalin?”). I’m not sure if the pollsters actually intended to do this, or maybe this question was simply poorly worded (but in that case, it would still reflect their state of mind). More appropriate would be the neutral question along the lines of “How important is a candidate’s strong religious belief?”, which would allow the possibility that candidates’ beliefs could influence voters either way.
One of the problems with “random” telephone-based studies is that they are heavily biased against the younger generations, being restricted (generally) to those who have fixed lines in their abodes.
Many young folk abandon this old-fashioned technology, and instead solely rely on personal cell-phones, with quite private numbers.
Also, the small survey base (~1000) renders the results suspect at best.