Poll: Romney likely to lose votes over Mormon faith

No kidding:

About half of all voters, and 60% of evangelical Republicans, know that Mitt Romney is a Mormon. The former Massachusetts governor’s religion has implications for his nomination run but not for the general election, should he be nominated as his party’s standard bearer.

White evangelical Protestants – a key element of the GOP electoral base – are more inclined than the public as a whole to view Mormonism as a non-Christian faith. And this view is linked to opinions about Romney: Republicans who say Mormonism is not a Christian religion are less likely to support Romney for the GOP nomination and offer a less favorable assessment of him generally. But they seem prepared to overwhelmingly back him in a run against Obama in the general election.

These are the principal findings from a new national survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press and the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, conducted Nov. 9-14 among 2,001 adults, including 1,576 registered voters. In the race for the GOP nomination, Romney trails Herman Cain by nine points (26% to 17%) among white evangelical Republican and Republican-leaning voters. Romney leads among white mainline Protestant Republicans (26% to 17% over Cain) and runs about even with Cain among white Catholic Republican voters (26% Romney, 23% Cain).

Read the rest of the study from the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life here. Still, as mentioned last week, I think that Romney is the clear Republican nominee to take on President Obama. For the first time in a long time, I’m not convinced that religion—at least not religion of presidential candidates—is going to be a major issue in the election.

Religious beliefs of voters, though, is a different matter.