Political Scorecard: Freedom of Religion

2016 Presidential Candidates (This is a subset of BillStamp's General Scorecard.)

(D) 93% Bernie Sanders

(D) 92% Elizabeth Warren

(D) 92% Al Franken

(D) 88% Kirsten Gillibrand

(D) 87% Claire McCaskill

(D) 86% Amy Klobuchar

(D) 81% Rahm Emanuel

(G) 80% Jill Stein

(D) 80% Chris Murphy

(D) 75% Andrew Cuomo

(D) 75% Howard Dean

(D) 75% Martin O'Malley

(D) 74% James "Jim" Webb

(D) 72% Hillary Clinton

(D) 64% Joe Biden

(D) 46% Lincoln Chafee

(L) 38% Gary Johnson

(D) 30% Dennis J. Kucinich

(R) 26% George Pataki

(R) 26% Chris Christie

(R) 25% Kelly Ayotte

(R) 20% Rand Paul

(R) 19% Marco Rubio

(R) 17% Donald Trump

(R) 16% Robert "Bob" Ehrlich Jr

(R) 15% Ben Carson

(R) 14% Carly Fiorina

(R) 12% Scott Walker

(R) 11% Ted Cruz

(R) 8% Lindsey Graham

(R) 8% Jeb Bush

(R) 5% Mike Huckabee

(R) 4% John Cornyn

(R) 4% Rick Santorum

(R) 4% John Kasich

(R) 3% Rick Perry

(R) 3% Bobby Jindal

(R) 1% Peter King



Data as of: June 29, 2015.

BillStamp's scorecards are meant to measure the probability that a politician will vote in the direction of the statement, "The U.S. Government and state governments are bound by the First Amendment to not favor any religious belief over any other." The analysis uses data from congressional voting records as well as secondary sources, and it implements nonparametric empirical Bayesian statistics for a mathematically accurate score. Here are some examples of votes that would have helped a politician's score:

"Nay" on U.S. House Concurrent Resolution 13 (2011)

"Nay" on U.S. House Concurrent Resolution 31 (1997)

"Nay" on U.S. House Amdt 200 (1999)

"Yea" on Louisiana's SB 70 (2014)

"Yea" on U.S. S 815 (2013)

"Nay" on U.S. S 2690 (2002)

(etc.)

Update (2015.06.29): Among GOP primary candidates, these scores have shown considerable correlation to those candidates' polling successes in New Hampshire. The total correlation is 47%, and if you exclude outliers (Bush, Christie), it bumps up to 86%! Linear regressions show that for every percentage point gained on the BillStamp scorecard, a candidate can gain 0.3-0.4 percentage points, with that relationship accounting for 20% of the overall variance in NH polling performance (or 75% of that variance, among non-outliers). All of this implies, at the very least, that GOP candidates would be wise to tone down any Religious-Right rhetoric. Jeb Bush is the only Religious-Right candidate who hasn't backed himself into a corner in the following graph, and that fact probably has more to do with his monetary backing, if anything.