53% View Marriage As A Religious Institution
Most voters now see marriage as a religious institution rather than a civil one and still overwhelmingly believe in the importance of marriage before having children.
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 53% of Likely U.S. Voters now view marriage as a religious institution, up from 48% in October. Forty percent (40%) consider marriage a civil institution, a five-point drop from 45% in the previous survey. (To see survey question wording, click here.)
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The survey of 1,000 Likely Voters was conducted on December 22, 2013 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.