Democrat Candidates and the Religiosity of Their Supporters

Pew Research Center have been at it with their data collection concerning the Democratic candidates for the primaries. The synopsis is interesting if hardly surprising:

On the whole, among registered voters who identify with or lean toward the Democratic Party, Protestants and Catholics are most likely to name Joe Biden as their first choice, according to a national survey Pew Research Center conducted in January.

Religiously unaffiliated Democrats lean more toward Bernie Sanders, with self-described atheists and agnostics especially more likely to name Sanders or Elizabeth Warren as their preferred choice....

No candidate has majority support from any of the large religious groups, and many voters still say they are undecided or decline to name a favorite. Among black Protestant Democratic voters, for example, 44% name Biden as their first choice – four times the share of any other candidate – but 30% remain undecided or give other responses indicating uncertainty in their vote choice.

Taking a very early look ahead to November’s general election, the survey also asked registered voters across the political spectrum to predict their vote – whether it would be for Donald Trump or the yet-to-be-determined Democratic nominee. Similar to other recent elections, most white evangelical Protestants say they will definitely (59%) or probably (17%) vote for Trump, and just 14% say they will probably or definitely vote for the Democrat. White Protestant voters who do not identify as born again or evangelical also are more likely than not to say they will vote for Trump in November.

Most black Protestant (79%) and religiously unaffiliated voters (66%), meanwhile, intend to vote Democratic, including majorities in each group who say they will definitely vote for the Democratic candidate.

Catholics are more evenly divided between those who say they will definitely vote for Trump (33%) and those who definitely plan to back the Democratic nominee (32%). About one-in-ten Catholic voters (11%) will probably vote for Trump, while an identical share (11%) will probably vote for the Democrat. Among Catholics, as among Protestants, racial and ethnic factors play a role: White Catholic voters lean more toward Trump than the Democratic nominee, while Hispanic Catholics are much more likely to say they will vote Democratic.