Polls Show Trump not Leading with Devoutly Religious Republicans
- Updated Sep 14, 2015
Despite reports that Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has support among evangelical Republicans, a Gallup poll showed that “highly religious” voters do not back Trump in high numbers.
Frank Newport, editor-in-chief of Gallup, writes in a column for The Christian Post that “a better view of Trump's image among this group comes from our Gallup data in which Republicans are asked about their views of each candidate individually.”
According to the data, Trump does not have high levels of support from highly religious Republicans. Among the 17 GOP candidates, Ben Carson leads with the most support among the highly religious group. Trump ranks 12th on the list.
“Note that Ben Carson's 56-point net favorable among the highly religious Republicans is over two and a half times higher than Trump's,” Newport said.
“In fact, four candidates in all — Carson, Mike Huckabee, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz — have more than double the net favorable rating among highly religious Republicans that Trump does.”
Gallup also measured how much support candidates have among Republican Protestants and Republican Catholics. Six of the candidates are Catholic: Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, Bobby Jindal, Rubio, Rick Santorum and George Pataki.
“Bush, Christie and Pataki are the three candidates who get the biggest "bumps" from Catholic Republicans compared with Protestant Republicans — nine points for Bush, 11 points for Christie, and nine points for Pataki.”
Publication date: September 14, 2015
