Francis' image in the US: Popular but not as before

By Andrea Tornielli
Vatican Insider
July 22, 2015

http://vaticaninsider.lastampa.it/en/world-news/detail/articolo/francesco-usa-42493/

Francis will visit the US in September

Gallup has conducted a poll on the Pope's popularity, two months before he is due to visit New York, Washington and Philadelphia. Francis’ favourability rating in the US has dropped since February 2014

He is still popular, but not super-popular as he was a year ago. This is the picture that emerges from a poll conducted in the US between 8 and 12 July by consulting company Gallup.

The results were published on Wednesday 22 July, just two months before Francis is due to arrive in the US, where he will be visiting New York, Washington and Philadelphia after his stop-over in Cuba. 59% of Americans have a favourable opinion of Pope Francis while 16% have an unfavourable opinion of him and 25% has no opinion of him or has never heard of him. It is interesting to compare these results to those of previous polls about Francis conducted by Gallup.

A month after his election in April 2013, Pope Francis had a 58% favourability rating in the US against 10% who had an unfavourable opinion of him. 31% did not have an opinion about him or had never heard of him.

Francis’ popularity shot up in February 2014, when, according to Gallup, 76% of Americans had a favourable opinion of the Pope, 9% did not and 16% had no opinion of him or had never heard of him. 

A look at the results of this latest survey shows that Pope Francis' favourability rating in the US has returned to where it was when he was elected Pope. Meanwhile, the percentage of those who view him unfavourably has increased from the 9%-10% he received in the first two surveys, to 16% in this latest survey.

Going through the various groups of people interviewed, in detail, what emerges is that the biggest drop in favourability is among Catholics (the Pope’s rating has fallen from 89% to 71%, an 18% drop) and among Americans who consider themselves political Conservatives (a drop from 72% to 45%, a 27% drop). Francis’ favourability rating among those who consider themselves political Liberals has dropped by 14% (82% favourable last year down to 68% this year). A very slight drop was seen among those who define themselves as moderates.

The results of the Gallup poll are based on telephone interviews with a random sample of 1,009 adults, aged 18 and older, living in all 50 US states and the District of Columbia. The margin of sampling error is ±4 percentage points at the 95% confidence level. As is the case with all surveys of this kind, one must be cautious when drawing conclusions. What can be said, however, is that it is likely the peak levels of popularity seen in February 2014 and the lowest levels seen in July this year reflect the way in which the Pope’s image has been presented: the revolutionary who apparently changed everything in the Church, sticking to the agenda with regard to female ordination, married priests and the approval same-sex unions; the “Marxist” Pope who is an enemy of the capitalist economy.

As was the case with his predecessors Benedict XVI and John Paul II, the percentages look to change after Francis’ visit to the US, when a far higher number of people will have the chance to see what he is doing and hear him speak. When Ratzinger visited, favourability ratings reached 63% in April 2008 before falling to 40% in 2010 in the midst of the paedophilia scandal, which he fought firmly against. Meanwhile, in February 2005, John Paul II obtained a 78% favourability rating just a few weeks before he breathed his last breath.