Romney’s Support (Almost) Completely Predicted by Voter’s Belief in Creationism
As a recent post at TPM points out, a poll from the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) measures the support for the candidates for the US Presidency by Religious Affiliation. If we then combine these results with a Pew Poll from 2009 we can compare a belief in Creationism with support for the candidates (see graph below).
So an individual’s Belief in Creationism (Non-belief in Darwinian Evolution) is almost as good of a predictor of who that they say they are supporting for president as is their self-identified membership in a category of Religious Affiliation. From looking at the graph we could make a prediction that if the Pew poll had broken down their Belief in Darwinism data down by “White-Catholics” and not just “Catholic” and if the PRRI Poll had had a category for “Mainline Protestants” and not just “White - Mainline Protestants” and the Pew Poll had had both as well then the two graphs for Romney Support vs. Religious Affiliation and Romney Support vs. Belief in Creationism might have fit each other almost perfectly.
Notes
1) while the Pew poll is from 2009 and asks for ones opinion on Darwinism we can assume that these opinions are fairly stable over time and that if an individual doesn’t believe in Darwinism that they believe in Creationism.
2) The Pew poll did not differentiate between White-Catholic and Catholic beliefs so the Catholic measure was used for both categories.
Links to sources