If a Republican candidate’s God-o-Meter rating is way up high, it must mean he’s getting the job done, right? Wrong. Case in point: a new analysis from the Gallup Poll shows that Mitt Romney’s strong Mormon identification (keeping God-o-Meter’s needle up) continues to be a drag among a constituency he sorely needs to win the GOP nomination: churchgoing Protestants. Gallup shows Romney with a net favorability rating of +3 among churchgoing Protestants, with 32-percent holding a favorable opinion of him and 29-percent holding an unfavorable one. Compare that to socially liberal Rudy Giuliani’s +19 favorability rating or Fred Thompson’s +25 rating among the same voters–not to mention Barack Obama’s +10 rating–and the magnitude of Romney’s problem becomes as clear as a God-o-Meter reading.
To the extent that a silver lining exists for Romney, it’s that a plurality of churchgoing Protestants–39-percent–have no opinion of him. He’ll have to do quite a sales job among those undecideds to make it to the general. But God-o-Meter must note that a certain Democratic frontrunner also has her work cut out for her: Hillary Clinton has a net favorability rating of -11-percent (yes, that’s negative eleven percent) among Protestant churchgoers, with only 3-percent undecided. She may not need to change too many Protestant minds to get her party’s primary nod. But the general election could be another story.
8