Canadians And Americans Reflect On Faith And Christianity In Politics

Toronto, ON - A new Ipsos Reid poll, conducted on behalf of CanWest News Service/Global News asked Canadians and Americans to reflect upon faith and the role of Christianity in government.

Asked whether they would vote for a government leader who is either an Evangelical Christian, a Muslim or an Atheist, most in both countries indicated they are willing to support any of these choices. However, Canadians and Americans are much less likely to be willing to vote for an Evangelical Christian today than they were 10 years ago.

Belief that Christians should get involved in politics and that Christian values should play a major role in American politics is stronger in the United States than in Canada. But fewer in both countries hold these beliefs than did so 10 years ago.

These are the findings of an Ipsos Reid poll conducted for CanWest News Service/Global News. For the survey, a representative sample of 814 adult Canadians, and 768 adult Americans were interviewed via telephone, from April 11th-12th, 2006. The sample used in this study has been weighted according to Census data to accurately reflect the population of both countries. With a sample of this size, the results for both countries are considered accurate to within 1773.5 percentage points, 19 times out of 20, of what they would have been had the entire population of each country been polled. The margin of error will be larger within each sub-grouping of the survey population.

Please open the attached PDF to view the factum and detailed tables.

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For more information on this news release, please contact:

Andrew Grenville
Senior Vice-President
Ipsos-Reid
(416) 416.526.6055