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Populus has run a poll on behalf of Hope Not Hate which sheds some fascinating light on the voting intentions of different religious groups in the forthcoming EU referendum. It comes at an interesting time, as the Remain and Leave camps cast their nets ever wider in a mutually desperate attempt to find cheerleaders and more and more religious figures are nailing their colours to the mast.

The former Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey came out as a Eurosceptic in the Daily Mail, and the former Archbishop of Westminster Cardinal Cormac Murphy O’Connor officially backed Remain in the Spectator. The official position of the Catholic and Anglican churches remains neutral (though Cardinal Vincent Nichols has left little doubt in his personal position). This cheer-leading, one suspects, will have little real effect, but it does raise the question, in this debate does religion really matter?

The answer from the Populus poll and other research seems to be Yes – at least a bit. Looking at the breakdown by religious group we can see some interesting differences between faiths. Obviously we need to have some caution with this, as differentiating religion from other socio-economic factors is notoriously difficult. Nonetheless just as previous Theos research has shown that religious affiliation does correlate up to a point with political affiliation (see our Voting and Values report here and our graphs of religious voting patterns here), so there are some interesting correlations when it comes to Brexit.

Some disclaimers; the Populus poll is of around 4000 adults, a fairly small sample particularly when looking at minority faiths. It was carried out online, which is relevant in so far as online polls tend to favour a Brexit vote, while phone polls seem to favour Remain. Perhaps as a result the poll as a whole predicts a small Brexit lead. It was also carried out in February, so isn’t necessarily reflective of the latest trends. Finally, it is looking at religious faith according to affiliation as defined by the respondents (rather than anything like attendance of religious services or belief in any particular theological claims). Accordingly it is impossible to see whether answers to these questions change based on how deeply held belief might be.

Those limitations noted, the headline here is that Christians are the most Eurosceptic group in the UK. The poll asked people to rate how likely they were to vote on a 100 point scale where 100 was definitely out, and 0 was definitely in. The overall results by faith group were as follows:

From this we can see that Christians are the most Eurosceptic faith group in the UK, while Sikhs, Hindus and Muslims are disproportionately pro-EU. The Jewish data are particularly interesting. 52% of Jews in this survey put themselves down as Eurosceptics (versus only 42% of Christians) but their overall average score was less Eurosceptic than that of the Christian group. The Jewish data also contain the interesting paradox that despite overall being more Eurosceptic than other faith groups Jews are far more likely than members of any other faith group to identify as “European” according to another question on the survey (23% of Jews would describe their identity as European, as opposed to British, or English. Nationally only 5% of respondents chose European). It is also worth noting that a more recent poll in the Jewish Chronicle with a far larger Jewish sample suggested a strong lead for Remain.

These data don’t really help us to understand why these groups vote this way (though Dan Hitchens in the Times has done some admirable digging and put together some interesting theories in discussion with representatives of various minority faiths. His interviewees include a Hindu Council member argiuing for Remain because Hindus are generally more pro-business). It does, however suggest that religion remains a significant identity marker and one that correlates with some quite stark differences in how people vote.

What these data don’t do is break down the Christian category by denomination. Were it to do so it might well illustrate an interesting range – not least between Catholics and Anglicans. Historically the relationship between the Catholic Church, Catholic Social Teaching and the development of the European project has been a close one (for more on this see A Soul for the Union, our report on the development of the EU). It is perhaps no surprise then that polling data have consistently shown a greater support for the EU among Catholics than Protestants. We might well expect that if the Christian category were broken down the result would be to see a particularly strong trait of Anglican Euroscepticism.

To what extent in the UK context this is the result of latent theological and psychological traits dating back to the Reformation or other more contemporary socio-economic trends is open to debate. Yet at its crudest the data would seem to suggest that the two sides of this debate have serious issues in reaching some groups in particular. The Leave campaign is not resonating with minority religious groups (with the interesting possible Jewish exception), and Remain has a serious Christian (potentially primarily Anglican) problem.

Ben Ryan is a researcher at Theos | @BenedictWRyan

To read more on the EU referendum, Ben's comprehensive report, 'A Soul for the Union', can be found here

Image by Yanni Koutsomitis from flickr.com available under this Creative Commons Licence