ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, August 4, 1996 TAG: 9608020065
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: The Back Pew
SOURCE: CODY LOWE
Pretend it's time to elect the successor to George Allen as governor of Virginia.
Both candidates are men. Both are "moderates on the issues."
One candidate is "a 57-year-old businessman from Fredericksburg who is married and has two children. He was raised as a Methodist but does not attend any church right now. He [is] a volunteer for the local Red Cross."
The other candidate is "a 50-year-old lawyer from Roanoke who's married and has three children. He is a deacon in his local Baptist church. He volunteers as a Boy Scout troop leader."
Whom would you be more likely to vote for?
That was the question in a recent Commonwealth Poll conducted by Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond. Actually, the religious affiliations of the two hypothetical candidates were alternated - sometimes the Fredericksburg businessman was the Baptist deacon and sometimes the Roanoke lawyer was the "lapsed" Methodist.
You probably will not be surprised to learn that 46 percent of the Virginians polled said they'd be more likely to vote for the deacon. Only 29 percent said they'd prefer the nonchurchgoer, while 25 percent expressed no preference.
Democrats were as likely as Republicans to prefer the deacon, poll director Scott Keeter said, but there were differences in preferences based on geographic region and race.
Western Virginia was the only region in which a majority - 55 percent of respondents - favored the deacon. But a plurality chose the deacon in every other geographic region - except the D.C. suburbs, where the "lapsed" Methodist was favored 39 percent to the deacon's 35 percent. But because the poll has a margin of error of 4 percentage points, the deacon might even have won election there.
The idea, said Keeter, was to discover the "impact of the candidates' religious activity on the voters' choices."
Though the overall result might not have been surprising, the breakdowns are interesting. (See related chart.)
"In the absence of clear differences between the candidates on issues of importance to them, the experiment suggests that very religious voters - who constitute a majority of the electorate, both in Virginia and nationally - will prefer churchgoing candidates," Keeter said last week.
Keeter's "very religious" voters include whites who identified themselves as evangelical Protestants and all black Christians, the vast majority of whom also would be identified as evangelical Protestants.
Some 65 percent of the white evangelicals and 58 percent of black Christians preferred the active church deacon. Only 39 percent of nonevangelical whites and 40 percent of Catholics said they would vote for the churchgoer.
Non-Christian and nonreligious respondents - representing about 20 percent of the total number who responded - preferred the "lapsed" Methodist 47 percent to 30 percent.
As you also might have expected, the poll found that a significant majority of Virginians say religion is important to them. Fully 63 percent said religion was "very important," and another 24 percent said it was "fairly important" in their lives. Those numbers are consistent with national polling data.
The poll also asked for opinions on two specific issues - abortion and welfare. In both cases, Keeter reported, about 33 percent of those responding said their religious beliefs were "very important" in helping them formulate their opinions about those issues. Another 20 percent said religion was "somewhat important" in defining their stands.
Keeter, a political scientist at Virginia Commonwealth University, warned that "the issues and overall ideological orientation remain the most important bases on which citizens choose candidates."
The poll, however, seems to reaffirm the basic assumption of the Christian Coalition and other Christian political-action groups - that religious folks, Christians in particular, do make political decisions rooted in their faith.
Apparently, those voters assume that churchgoing candidates are more likely to share their values and beliefs than nonchurchgoers.
It is, as Keeter said, "another indicator of the continuing importance of religion to many voters."
What the poll doesn't answer - and what is the $64,000 question for the political parties - is how this religious element will figure into races in which the candidates' personalities, political ideologies, political records, and stands on the issues vary significantly from each other.
For instance, Southern Baptist Bill Clinton is a member of a conservative Christian denomination, while Bob Dole is a member of the - relatively speaking - liberal United Methodist Church. Politically, however, Clinton is labeled the liberal and Dole the conservative.
Now we'll keep our eyes open to see if Clinton becomes a deacon, or if Dole "lapses." Then maybe we can pick a winner.
LENGTH: Medium: 92 lines ILLUSTRATION: GRAPHIC: chart - Religion at the polls color STAFF KEYWORDS: POLITICS MGRby CNB