JourneyOnline
Almost 70 percent of people surveyed in the United States agree that it is important for a president to have strong religious beliefs.
The adults surveyed also perceive the Democratic Party’s Hillary Clinton and the Republican Party’s Rudy Giuliani as the least religious of the country’s major 2008 presidential candidates. Republican Mitt Romney is seen as the most religious, but his Mormon faith is likely to hurt him with voters, and religion itself is taking a back seat to domestic issues and the Iraq War in the election.
Those are some of the results of a poll released on 6 September by the Pew Research Center, an independent Washington DC-based opinion research group that studies attitudes toward the press, politics and public policy issues.
Seventy percent of those surveyed said they believe it is important for a president to have strong religious beliefs.
Only 16 percent of Americans consider Hillary Clinton as very religious, against fellow Democratic Party challengers Barack Obama (24 percent) and John Edwards (28 percent). But majorities see all three top Democratic contenders as being "somewhat" religious.
Giuliani, the former may of New York City, was considered very religious by only 14 percent.
Of those surveyed, 46 percent said they consider Romney to be very religious, far more than any other candidate. Yet a quarter of all Republicans – including 36 percent of white evangelical Protestants – said they would be less likely to vote for a Mormon.
"A quarter of Americans — Democrat, independent and Republican alike – say they would be less likely to vote for a presidential candidate who is Mormon, and these people have substantially less favourable impressions of (Romney)," the Pew Research Center research concluded.
The survey found that half of those surveyed said the Republican Party is friendly towards religion, while 30 percent said the same about the Democrats. The poll also indicated that overall religion will remain an important element in U.S. presidential politics.
Ecumenical News International
Photo : WORLD NEWS
