Religious groups and their political leanings

[DC Al Fine]

I always wish these surveys would break apart cultural Catholics and practicing Catholics.

Agreed. This works on two levels:

1) Catholics don't completely apostatize like Protestants tend to, so you get a lot more irreligious in all but name type identifying with the Catholic church.

2) People who specifically identify as "Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod" or something specific like that are probably going to be more religious, knowledgeable etc, than a generic "Catholic". The specific denomination name serves as a way of splitting out more religious people in a way you can't really do with Catholicism.

[DC Al Fine]

I always wish these surveys would break apart cultural Catholics and practicing Catholics.

Agreed. This works on two levels:

1) Catholics don't completely apostatize like Protestants tend to, so you get a lot more irreligious in all but name type identifying with the Catholic church.

2) People who specifically identify as "Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod" or something specific like that are probably going to be more religious, knowledgeable etc, than a generic "Catholic". The specific denomination name serves as a way of splitting out more religious people in a way you can't really do with Catholicism.

It would be interesting to see various Protestant denominations in Canada, the UK, Australia.

Taking some wild guesses...

Canada
Tories got something like 55% of Protestants in 2011, so I would guess that even the United Church has a bit of a Tory lean and that Evangelicals vote something like 75-80% Tory. Some possible exceptions would be the Salvation Army (mostly in Newfoundland), and maybe Pentecostals.


UK
C of E - Tory
Evangelicals - Bit of a mixed bag (White Troy socons mixed with Labour voting minorities)
Non Anglican/Evangelical Protestants - Lean Lib Dem, although this link might be severed now.

Australia

No idea

[DC Al Fine]

In Canada, Baptists are so well represeted in the Maritimes, I wonder if they lean Liberal or if they're still Conservative and their votes are just outweighed by everyone else.

It depended on where. Heavily Baptist areas in New Brunswick actually stayed Tory for the most part, while in Nova Scotia, they were just less Liberal than the rest of the Liberal sweep.

As for the UK, there's a saying that the Labour Party was more influenced by Methodism than by Marx.  Though wasn't Margaret Thatcher also a Methodist?  Furthermore, I believe the Methodists in the UK are more socially conservative than the Church of England (unlike the situation in Canada with UCC/Anglicans) and their numbers have really really declined.

I couldn't tell you about actual Methodist practice or social conservatism, but Thatcher was raised Methodist, but converted to Anglicanism upon marrying Dennis Thatcher. I don't believe she was particularly religious.