Pollytics blog today reports on an Essential Research survey on religion and party affiliation. It finds that the religious divide in Australian politics, with Catholics tending to favour Labor, and Protestants tending to favour the Coalition, remains alive. According to this survey, 50% of Catholics support Labor and only 29% support the Coalition.

Other surveys, however, find that among Catholics the Coalition has been catching up on Labor. The chart below tracks 40 years of data using the party id (”think of yourself as Labor, Liberal…etc”) question rather than which party the respondent supports at the current time. Pollytics says that Essential’s question was which party the respondent felt “closest to”, but perhaps this is building in too much of the Rudd bubble.

Sources: 1967*, 1979, Australian National Political Attitudes Survey; 1987-2007 Australian Election Survey. Continue reading “Which party do Catholics support?” →