New Barna Group Survey on Religion and the Presidential Election
Senator Obama seems to be ahead of Senator McCain among most faith groups.
Among Catholics, he leads 39 percent to 29 percent. But he has slipped since June.
What’s interesting to me about polling, although I know nothing about it, is the formulation of categories. Here is what the article says about categorizing evangelicals. Anybody know if they have as complicated an approach to categorizing Catholics?
Understanding Evangelicals
One of the most frequently reported on groups of voters is evangelicals. Most media polls use a simplistic approach to defining evangelicals, asking survey respondents if they consider themselves to be evangelical. Barna Group surveys, on the other hand, ask a series of nine questions about a person’s religious beliefs in order to determine if they are an evangelical. The differences between the two approaches are staggering.
Using the common approach of allowing people to self-identify as evangelicals, 40% of adults classify themselves as such. Among them, 83% are likely to vote in November. Among the self-reported evangelicals who are likely to vote, John McCain holds a narrow 39% to 37% lead over Sen. Obama. Nearly one-quarter of this segment (23%) is still undecided about who they will vote for.
Using the Barna approach of studying people’s core religious beliefs produces a very different outcome. Just 8% of the adult population qualifies as evangelical based on their answers to the nine belief questions. Among that segment, a significantly higher proportion (90%) is likely to vote in November, and Sen. McCain holds a huge lead (61%-17%) over the Democratic nominee. Overall, just 14% of this group remains undecided regarding their candidate of choice.
on August 12th, 2008 at 11:54 am
I also don’t know much about the nuts and bolts of polling, but from the limited explanation available at the Barna website, it appears special emphasis in the categorization of the poll was given to evangelicals, and its subset, born-again Christians, only. Other Christians, though denominated separately as Catholics, Mainline Protestants, etc., were grouped together as “notional Christians.” I have no idea whether the Barna poll casts light or shadow on how evangelicals will be voting, but the poll seems to have been designed to focus on the strictly-defined “evangelical” vote only.
Another interesting poll to conteplate. Religion & Ethics Newsweekly has an interesting Zogby poll from about 2 weeks ago on the bump, or lack thereof, McCain and Obama would receive from relgious voters by their selections of running mates.
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/blog/2008/07/election-2008-vicepresidential.html
As you’ll see, Mike Huckabee would give McCain the greatest bump among religious voters among those VP candidates polled, and Colin Powell would give Obama a very significant bump among religious voters if Obama chose him as his running mate.
on August 12th, 2008 at 12:12 pm
One additional comment on the Zogby poll: 3 of the governors being mentioned in the media as possible VP selections (Tim Pawlenty (R-MN), Tim Kaine (D-VA), and Kathleen Sibelius (D-KS)) would each have a net negative bump effect on religious voters if chosen as a running mate.
on August 12th, 2008 at 12:18 pm
Barna is an evangelical himself who is concerned with promoting the movement, or a certain sort of evangelical movement, and his methods and definitions are a source of much debate within the polling community and the Christian community. So I’d tend to view his results with great wariness.
on August 12th, 2008 at 5:24 pm
As David says, Barna is hardly a disinterested pollster. As this poll’s categories reveal, he’s in particular got a lot invested in defining evangelicalism (narrowly conceived) in opposition to other branches of the faith.
On the other hand, evangelicalism is a complex, contested concept–and an interdenominational one–that deserves a sophisticated definition. It’s inadequate to simply ask people to self identify, because a lot of people that everyone else calls evangelicals don’t identify themselves as such. (They identify themselves simply as CHRISTIANS, i.e., the real ones…) Whether Barna’s definition is a good one is another question.