As Election Day draws near, the party leaders have been competing to woo the ‘religious vote’.

Both David Cameron and Ed Miliband recently visited black-majority churches in a bid to shore up their credentials among Christian voters. UKIP, meanwhile, has launched a ‘Christian manifesto’  in which it declares it will give a “muscular defence of our Christian heritage”. Among other things, if elected the party would give legal protection to “those expressing a religious conscience in the workplace” with regards to same-sex marriage.

Nigel Farage has said that he “sometimes prays to God”, and has described himself as a lapsed Anglican who rarely attends church. In his attendance level he reflects the vast majority of self-defining Anglicans – 83% of whom are non-churchgoers.

Are there differences in political allegiance between Christians who regularly attend church and those who do not?

The chart shows how Anglicans and Catholics voted in 2001, 2005 and 2010, categorised by their level of attendance. For clarity, those classed as ‘regular attenders’ said they attend religious services once a month or more; ‘irregular attenders’ attended less often or not at all.

In 2001 and 2005, regularly attending Anglicans were more likely than their irregular counterparts to vote Tory. This trend matches Anglican voting habits in the longer term. In each election in 1983, 1987, 1992 and 1997, regularly attending Anglicans were more likely to vote Tory than those who did not. In each of those years the difference in Tory support between the groups was between 8 and 15%. (See Voting and Values, p.36).

In 2010, however, this long-term trend changed. 52% of regularly attending Anglicans voted for the Conservatives compared to 56% of irregular attenders. Regular attenders gave more support than irregulars to the Liberal Democrats – 26% to 16%.

Over the period as a whole, both regularly and irregularly attending Anglicans became more likely to vote for the Conservatives between 2001 and 2010.

The shift to Blue allegiance was greater among irregular attenders than for regulars. Regularly attending Anglican support for the party rose from 40% in 2001 to 52% in 2010, compared to a rise from 33% to 56% among irregular attenders.

In parallel to this, Labour votes among both Anglican categories dropped significantly over the period. The biggest decline in Labour support came from irregularly attending Anglicans. In 2001 a greater proportion of this group voted for Labour (45%) than for the Tories (33%). By 2010, however, Labour support had collapsed to 22%, compared to 56% for the Tories.

Among Catholics, however, differences between regular and irregular attenders were much less pronounced.

In 2001 and 2005 regularly attending Catholics were more likely than irregulars to vote Labour – 60 to 54% in the first year, and 58 to 50% in the second. In 2010 irregular attenders were slightly more likely to support the party, but only by a very small margin. Between 2005 and 2010, Catholic support for Labour fell more heavily among regular than irregular attenders – 58 to 44% for regulars, compared to 50 to 46% for irregulars.

Tory support among Catholics was fairly equal between the two groups. There were bigger differences in support for the Lib Dems. In 2005 and 2010 irregularly attending Catholics were more likely than regulars to vote for the third party – in 2010 the difference was between 25% (regulars) and 32% (irregulars).

Overall, then, the level of religious attendance has historically made more of a difference for Anglicans than for Catholics when it comes to voting. Over the long term, regularly attending Anglicans have tended to be more likely to vote Tory. As we have seen, however, the Conservatives made big gains in 2010 from among irregular Anglicans. Interestingly, a 2013 mid-term survey found that practising and non-practising Anglicans were almost equal in their support for the Tories. It remains to be seen whether level of church attendance will make a difference on 7th May.