Spiritual Politics  

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Spiritual Politics blog

State by State

Leonard E. Greenberg Center

State by state

Connecticut

Polls

Connecticut Republican Exit Poll
Connecticut Democratic Exit Poll
 

Religious demographics chart

 

Republican Primary Results

Connecticut

Candidate

Votes

Vote %

Del*


County
Results

 


McCain


78,741


52%


27


Romney


49,851


33%


0


Huckabee


10,591


7%


0


Paul


6,092


4%


0


Giuliani


2,470


2%


0


Uncommitted


2,414


2%


0

 

Democratic Primary Results

 Connecticut

Candidate

Votes

Vote %

Del*


County
Results


Obama


179,349


51%


26


Clinton


164,831


47%


22


Edwards


3,408


1%


0


Uncommitted


3,007


1%


0

Commentary

Democrat
In the worship-attending department, Clinton prevailed in just the category of the “few times a year” folks, by 52 percent to 47 percent. By religious group, Obama had a major problem with Catholics, losing them by a margin of 59 percent to 39 percent—and Catholics constituted 42 percent of the Democratic vote. This Catholic gap was, however, more than offset by Obama’s success in every other category—62 percent of the Protestants (including 55 Percent of white Protestants), 61 percent of the Jews, and 67 percent of the “others.” Interestingly, those with no religion divided pretty evenly, 52 percent to 47 percent for Obama.

The Jewish vote in Connecticut is particularly noteworthy, given the strong preference of Jews for Clinton in New York, New Jersey, California, and (earlier) in Florida. Jews in Massachusetts broke for Obama as well, though much less strongly. Is this a New England thing? Perhaps it is not out of place to mention that the largest concentration of Jews in Connecticut live on the north side of West Hartford, in close and pretty harmonious proximity to the largest concentration of African Americans in Connecticut, in the north end of Hartford and in Bloomfield. Let us also bear in mind that nowhere in the country is there a larger concentration of members of the United Church of Christ, the Mainline Protestant denomination of which Obama is a member—and whose annual convention he addressed in Hartford in the summer of 2007, creating as much enthusiasm as Congregationalists are capable of generating.

Republican
Religion factored relatively little into this race. Huckabee drew a disproportionate number of Protestants weekly attenders (27 percent), but only 13 percent of all Protestants. Among the small number of evangelicals (14 percent), he actually finished a poor third at 23 percent, compared to 38 percent for Romney and 35 percent for McCain. New England evangelicals are, in the final analysis, New Englanders, and tend resist appeals to vote along religious lines. Romney never had anything to fear from evangelical New Englanders. The problem was that there weren’t very many of them. Only four percent of Catholics voted for Huckabee—three percentage points less his overall proportion of the vote.

   

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