World Values Survey

I'm not sure why the World Values Survey is in the news at this time, but it contains lots of poll data, so I won't complain.

The study found that nearly two thirds of people identify themselves religious, just over one third as non-religious, and three percent as committed atheists.

Nearly half of Finns believe in one God, and nearly one third in some kind of spirit or life force. Only seven percent do not believe in the existence of any God, spirit, or life force.

Compared with rest of the 80 countries taking part in the World Values study, Finns rank below the average in their religiosity.

Those numbers sound awfully big to me, not that that's a reason to doubt them.

Looking at the 2000 figures - the website doesn't seem to have the 2005 results - one can find lots of fun figures. 45.7 percent of respondents believe in telepathy. 25.2 percent consult their horoscope at least once a week. 28.9 percent believe that homosexuality is never justifiable. I wonder how many do all three.

With regard to politics, using the crosstabs feature, we can tell that almost a third of respondents who go to church more than once a week would vote for the Christian Democrats. The Centre Party dominates among respondents who go to church once a week or once a month. The Social Democratic Party wins big among respondents who go to church less often than once a year. National Coalition Party supporters are more evenly divided between regular church-goers and normal people.