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Will 2016 be the last year of the 'God Gap?'

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Candidates' 'religiosity' no longer reveals which party they favor.

The "God Gap" appears to have been divided for the first time.

Highlights

LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - The "God Gap" is a term describing the unusual matchup between Trump and Clinton's "religiosity," which is the level of faith and church attendance of a person.

According to a candidate's religiosity, the American public can assume the candidate will likely vote Republican (more religious) or Democrat (less religious).


According to a Pew Research survey released July 13, Trump leads with more white evangelical protestants while Clinton is backed by black protestants and Hispanic Catholics.

The trend revealed a "notable shift in the voting intentions of regular churchgoers."

In an unusual occurrence, 49 percent of churchgoers who claim they attend services at least once a week plan to vote for Trump and 45 percent have decided to vote for Clinton.

When similar divisions were seen in 2012, "Romney held a 15-point advantage among weekly churchgoers" and exit polls revealed Romney beat Obama by 20 points among those same voters.


The shift in preferences was mainly led by Catholics who attend at least one Mass a week. Clinton has had a 19-point lead thanks to the Catholic voters who attend Mass regularly but Trump has the White evangelical votes.

George Washington University also found the God Gap is closing. According to their research, there are less than 15 percentage points differentiating Republican and Democrat votes, a 25 percent difference from the 2012 election.

FiveThirtyEight reported on Pew's data to say: "The share of weekly churchgoing evangelicals who support the Democratic nominee has remained nearly flat from June 2012 to June 2016, but their reasons have changed.

"Two-thirds of churchgoing evangelical Obama supporters described their vote as 'for Obama' rather than 'against Romney,' but the proportions are exactly flipped for Clinton."

Interactive charts on candidate switching among Republicans and Democrats revealed 10 percent of voters who supported Ted Cruz in the primary now support Clinton, 20 percent of voters who supported John Kasich now support Clinton and 15 percent of voters who were undecided have joined Clinton's camp.

Meanwhile, 9 percent of voters who supported Bernie Sanders now support Trump and 18 percent of undecided voters have decided to vote for Trump in the general election.

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