Romney's Religious Hurdle in Iowa

Alexander Burns reports at Politico:

FIRST IN SCORE – IOWA SNAPSHOT – STILL NOT BUYING: The same evangelical voters who helped Mike Huckabee defeat Mitt Romney in Iowa three years ago are still enthusiastic about the former Arkansas governor – and remain a difficult bloc of voters for Romney to crack. In a Neighborhood Research poll of likely caucus-goers conducted earlier this month, Romney was trailing Huckabee by wide margins among Baptist voters and members of other evangelical denominations, even as the former Massachusetts governor did well with other observant Christians. With Baptists (a tenth of the sample of churchgoing voters), Huckabee took 39 percent of the vote to Romney’s 16 percent; Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich each took 10 percent. With voters identified as non-Baptist, non-Reformed evangelicals (17 percent of the sample), Huckabee was in first place with 34 percent, followed by Palin with 14 percent and Romney and Gingrich tied for third, at 7 percent.

WHERE MITT WINS – Even if evangelical voters still have hesitations about Romney, it’s not clear that their objections are enough to make the caucuses unwinnable for the former Bain executive. In the top line numbers for Neighborhood Research, Romney was only 5 points behind Huckabee among all likely caucus-goers. And among the 65 percent of respondents who said they were weekly churchgoers, pollster Rick Shaftan notes that Romney has areas of some strength: “Romney leads Huckabee 26-22 with mainline Protestants [nearly a quarter of the sample]. Gingrich is at 7, Pawlenty and Palin at 4, Paul and Bachmann at 3. … Romney leads Huckabee 25-16 with Catholics [19 percent of the sample] with 11 for Palin, 10 for Gingrich and 5 for Pawlenty.” The kicker: “Of the four Mormons sampled, three were for Mitt Romney and one for Ron Paul.” Here’s the full memo on churchgoing respondents: http://politi.co/fwn68v ; and here’s the original analysis of the poll’s top line numbers: http://politi.co/g2GxoQ