(Professor Alan Abramowitz poses in front of a slide predicting President Barack Obama as winning the 2012 U.S. Presidential election at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, July 27, 2012. Abramowitz is one of the most accurate forecasters of the last few U.S. elections and is still gathering bits of data before issuing a final prediction by the end of the summer. REUTERS/Tami Chappell )
The religious faiths of President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney will have little weight in November’s presidential election, a poll has shown. Sixty percent of voters are aware that Romney is a Mormon, and 81 percent say it does not matter to them, according to the poll by the Pew Research Center. The awareness level is almost unchanged from four months ago, during the Republican primary elections.
“Unease with Romney’s religion has little impact on voting preferences,” the Pew report said. “Republicans and white evangelicals overwhelmingly back Romney irrespective of their views of his faith, and Democrats and seculars overwhelmingly oppose him regardless of their impression.”
The United States has never had a Mormon president.
Obama is a Christian but the view that he is Muslim persists almost four years into his presidency, with 17 percent of voters saying he is Muslim. Forty-nine percent say he is Christian, down from 55 percent near the end of his 2008 campaign, and 31 percent say they do not know Obama’s religion. Among conservative Republicans, 34 percent say Obama, a Democrat, is Muslim, the poll showed.
Overall, 45 percent of voters are comfortable with Obama’s religion, 5 percent say it does not matter and 19 percent are uncomfortable.
