The world’s favourite vicar-cum-journalist, the Rev George Pitcher, is back. Last time he said the BHA had no sense of humour… about justice in a case of violent assault. Rev Pitcher put us right, and now all humanists everywhere think that soft sentences granted for religious reasons are hilarious.

Now, Rev Pitcher continues his campaign to dispel the stereotype that vicars are all charitable, gentle people, full of empathy, compassion and a willingness to understand the views of others. He swallows a poll from Theos anduses it to justify a recommendation that political parties should basically cater pretty well exclusively to the religious, and describes as “numbskull” the professed atheism of Nick Clegg.

The survey, conducted by ComRes, shows that, while the poll lead for the Tories slips further into single figures, support for Conservatives from Christians has risen only from 38 to 40 per cent since 2005. This figure is important, because 48 per cent of Christians surveyed said that they are “absolutely certain” to vote, a figure that rockets to 61 per cent among Christians who say that their faith “is very important” to their lives. The national average of those “absolutely certain” to vote is 47 per cent.

Intriguingly, the poll reveals that 57 per cent of British Muslims would vote Labour. Since Labour is the governing party that gave us the Iraq war, stigmatising anti-terror laws and Tony Blair as a Middle East peace envoy, that’s somewhat surprising. But it makes more sense when you see that only 32 per cent of Muslims are “absolutely certain” to vote at all, which suggests that Labour’s attempts to assimilate Muslims into political life has some way to go.

…

Similarly and unsurprisingly, given the numbskull atheism declared by their leader Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrats poll best of the parties among those who claim they have no religion. Again, secularists and atheists represent the tiniest of constituencies when it comes to political activity; organisations such as the National Secular Society and the British Humanist Association make a lot of noise and post silly adverts for the nonexistence of a deity on the sides of buses, but they are very coy about their membership numbers. In truth, as a concrete body of voters motivated by an anti-religion ideology, they are less significant politically even than the Muslims.

By contrast, the last Census in 2001 showed well over 70 per cent of the population describing themselves as Christian. Even I wouldn’t claim to count all these among the faithful.

Yet apparently it’s still worth mentioning?

By the way the membership of the British Humanist Association is around 10,000 as this page shows (if you count the little people!)

Pitcher’s full article is at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/election-2010/7289494/General-Election-2010-David-Cameron-should-have-more-faith-in-the-Christian-vote.html

Meanwhile a very different kind of Christian reads and excellently analyses the Theos poll, detecting that it probably isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, and indicates that there’s little of substance which could be used to really aim policy at “the religious” anyway.

A very interesting set of poll results are out this morning. The poll was commissioned by our friends at Theos and carried out by ComRes.

The results may not have been the kind of thing the Bible Society’s thinktank were hoping for. They haven’t themselves yet highlighted some of the most interesting results. Indeed, the results have been released under the rather vague message: “Voters with a religious faith could determine the outcome of the general election”. They could indeed. As could the votes of women, the disabled, ethnic minorities and a whole range of other groups.

But an analysis of the results makes some fascinating reading, and actually challenges the idea that religious people (when considered as a whole) vote that much differently to others. They certainly appear to explode a number of myths concerning the political views of religious people. However, the results are also broken down by specific religion, religious commitment etc… There is of course a limit to how meaningful the poll results are when you drill down as there may be quite a bit of margin for error. However at first glance here are the ‘big’ headlines without drilling down too far: …

1.There is no evidence that religious people are more likely to vote than others, despite claims to the contrary. Thirty-four per cent said they didn’t vote at the last general election in 2005. A further six per cent refused to answer the question and three per cent couldn’t remember. This would leave a total of betwen 57-66 per cent who voted. The turnout in 2005 was in the middle of this range at just under 62 per cent. Indeed, other ComRes surveys of the wider population mirror these percentages exactly.

2. In 2005 religious people voted for the main parties in the same way as the wider populationThe ComRes poll of the whole population conducted on 10th and 11th Feb 2010 asked: “Thinking back to the last general election in 2005, which party if any did you vote for?” The percentages were: Conservative 19 per cent, Labour 22 per cent, Lib Dem 12 per cent. These are identicial to the new results from the religious sample.

Jonathan Bartley’s exploration of the poll continues at: http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/node/11317