By Viviana Gonzalez
Tuesday’s primary marks the height of political attention on New Hampshire. These past few weeks, the Granite State’s role in the race to the presidency has dominated political conversations. However, New Hampshire has garnered attention for more than just its primary. A recently released Gallup Pollhighlights New Hampshire as the least religious state in the U.S. in 2015.
Interestingly, the Gallup Poll’s findings on New Hampshire’s religiosity is consistent with the correlation between religiosity and gender parity, measured by the Gender Parity Index (GPI) that Representation 2020 uncovered and analyzed last year. The lower the state’s religiosity, the higher its GPI score tends to be.
According to Representation 2020’s 2015-2016 report on women’s representation across the country, New Hampshire has the highest GPI score in the country, scoring 57 points. New Hampshire’s new standing marks it as a prime example of the correlation between religiosity and women’s representation.
Gallup’s new religiosity rankings provide ample support of this correlation. While only 20% of New Hampshire respondents reported they were “very religious,” Mississippi stands on the other end of the spectrum with 63% of its population reporting they are “very religious,” making it the most religious state in the country. Meanwhile, Mississippi has the lowest GPI score in the country, scoring only 7 points. Across the religiosity spectrum, the Gallup rankings follow Representation 2020’s previously established correlation. When brought together, the Gallup Poll data on religiosity and the GPI scores reported by Representation 2020 exemplify the inverse correlation between religiosity and women’s representation.
However, in the context of the New Hampshire primary, this finding strikes a point of tension with the results of the presidential primary. Bernie Sanders handily won in New Hampshire, over the female candidate (Hillary Clinton). However, this one primary is not representative of New Hampshire’s gender parity standing. In Representation 2020’s analysis of the state, women’s representation in New Hampshire stands above the rest of the nation. It is the first and only state to send an all-female delegation to Congress (in 2012), and since 2009 at least half of the state’s congressional delegation has been female.Though Hillary Clinton lost in New Hampshire, New Hampshire still ranks highest for women’s representation in the country.