Religious voters turning away from Trump

By Mark Silk | October 21, 2016

(RNS) Over the past two decades, the biggest story in religious voting patterns has been the emergence of the so-called God gap — the tendency of religious voters regardless of affiliation to prefer Republicans and of less religious ones to prefer Democrats.

This is usually measured by way of voters who tell exit pollsters they attend worship services at least once a week. Since the 2000 election, they have consistently preferred Republican to Democratic presidential and congressional candidates by 60 percent to 40 percent (give or take) — a margin roughly twice as large as the better-known gender gap (measured as women’s preference for voting Democratic).

But it looks like the God gap is going shrink sharply this year … in the presidential contest.

Here’s what’s happened over the past couple of months according to the two most recent GWBattleground polls — one taken August 28-September 1 showing Hillary Clinton leading Donald Trump by two points, the other taken October 8-13 showing her up by eight.

http://religionnews.com/2016/10/21/religious-voters-turning-away-from-trump/