The Effect of Religion on Candidate Preference in the 2008 and 2012 Republican Presidential Primaries.

Leigh A Bradberry,Michiel Van Elk

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0152037

Abstract

Thanks to the work of politics and religion scholars, we now know a lot about the relationship between religion and voting in American presidential general elections. However, we know less about the influence of religion on individual vote choice in presidential primaries. This article fills that gap by exploring the relationship between religion and candidate preference in the 2008 and 2012 Republican primaries. Using pre-Super Tuesday surveys conducted by the Pew Research Center, I find that the Republican candidate who most explicitly appealed to religious voters (Mike Huckabee in 2008 and Rick Santorum in 2012) was the preferred candidate of Republican respondents who attended religious services at the highest levels, and that as attendance increased, so did the likelihood of preferring that candidate. I also find that identification as a born again Christian mattered to candidate preference. Specifically, born again Christians were more likely than non-born again Christians to prefer Huckabee to Mitt Romney, John McCain and Ron Paul in 2008, and Santorum to Romney in 2012. Although ideology was not the primary subject of this article, I find that ideology was also a statistically significant predictor of Republican candidate preference in both 2008 and 2012. This robust finding reinforces scholars’ prior work on the importance of ideology in explaining presidential primary vote choice. The overall findings of the paper provide evidence that religion variables can add to our understanding of why voters prefer one candidate over another in presidential primaries.

Highlights

Thanks to the work of religion and politics scholars over the last three decades, the connection between religion and vote choice in American presidential general elections is well documented (e.g., [1], [2], [3])
Using surveys from the Pew Research Center taken just before Super Tuesday in 2008 and in 2012, I find that highly religious Republican voters preferred the candidate in each election who most explicitly appealed to religious voters, and that as attendance increased, so did the likelihood of preferring that candidate (Huckabee in 2008 and Santorum in 2012)
There is a steady but small decline in the probability of supporting McCain (-.07), a steady and larger decline for Romney (-.15), and a significant increase for Huckabee (+.22). These results confirm that even with many other variables taken into account, increased attendance dramatically benefitted Huckabee—the candidate who most explicitly appealed to religious voters—and moderately harmed Romney—the candidate who was constantly on the defensive when it came to religion and “values issues.”

Summary

Introduction

Thanks to the work of religion and politics scholars over the last three decades, the connection between religion and vote choice in American presidential general elections is well documented (e.g., [1], [2], [3]). One consistently replicated finding is that while religious affiliation or “belonging” alone used to be the main dividing line when Americans went to the polls, the degree of an individual’s religious commitment—typically measured by looking at the individual’s behavior and beliefs—is a key predictor of vote choice in general presidential elections.

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Conclusion