Sometimes you get a question from a reporter that stops you dead in your tracks. That happened to me recently.
The question was a seemingly simple one, but I had never considered before: If the nones are rising so quickly, then why aren’t Democrats just mopping the floor with Republicans?
Well, that’s a good question. And it’s not super easy to answer. But let me walk through how I am thinking about it.
The underlying assumption is two things:
(1) The nones are an increasingly larger share of the American electorate.
(2) They prefer Democrats on election day.
Let’s quickly justify both of those assumptions with data.
The nones are clearly rising. They were in the doldrums from 1972 through 1990. The share of Americans with no religious affiliation only increased from 5% to 7% during that stretch. But from that point forward, they just exploded in size. By 1996 they were in the double digits. By 2006, they were above 15%. Eight years later they were north of 20%. In 2021, the nones had reached an all-time high in the General Social Survey at ~29%.
In 1972, one in twenty adults were nones. In 2021, it’s almost one in three. That has to have major implications for politics, right? Well only if those non-religious folks tend to vote in large numbers for one party. Is that true?
Yes. Clearly it is. In the 2020 election, 86% of atheists voted for Joe Biden — just 10% were Donald Trump voters. Eighty percent of agnostics also went from the Democrat, just 17% voted for the Republican. Those are solid blue blocs, without a doubt.
Nothing in particulars do tend to lean toward the Democrats, but not as much as the other types of nones. In 2020, 63% of nothing in particulars went for Biden, while 34% backed Trump. In 2016, just 55% of nothing in particulars voted for Hillary Clinton. This is a blue-ish bloc, but not nearly as homogeneous as atheists/agnostics.
The second assumption is generally true, though. The nones are an important constituency for any Democrat who aspires to win an election. But just how important? I calculated the religious composition of Democrats and Republicans in 2008 and 2022 to understand just how much the party faithful have shifted over the prior 14 years.
In 2008, a majority of Democrats were Protestant or Catholic (57%). Today, that’s dropped to 44%. That’s still a lot of Christians in the Democratic party, though. But the nones have been chipping away. In 2008, they were 36% of all Democrats, today that has risen to 48%. It’s almost a perfect flip - Christians are down by 13 points, nones have gained 14 points.
The Republicans are a bit more stable, though. In 2008, 80% of Republicans were Christians — today it’s 73% percent. The nones were 13%, now they are 21%. So, the shift here is about 7-8 points from Christian to none. About half the rate of Democrats.
It’s not like the nones have only shifted the composition of the Democrats, some of them have also been added to the ranks of the GOP, as well. So, the rise of the nones isn’t just a complete gain for Democrats. The other thing to note here is that there are still a ton of Protestants and Catholics in the Democratic coalition — 44% in fact.
That’s a point worth driving home. I know the narrative out there surrounding white Christianity and its inevitable decline. Yes, the share of Americans who are white and Christian has dropped precipitously over the last fifty years. How much?
In the late 1970s, about 80% of all adults in the United States were White Christians. That share was still above 60% in 2004. The General Social Survey’s data from the last several waves indicates that White Christians still make a majority of the country through 2018. There are a lot of White Christians in America, still.
Until about 2006, a majority of the Democratic party was White Christians. The most recent reliable estimate from 2018 indicates that about 40% of Democrats are White Christians.
For Republicans, it’s a party that is still dominated by White Christianity. It was 90% White Christians even into the late 1980s. By 2000, that number dropped to about 80%. Today, the share of the GOP who are White Christians is 70-75%.
Sometimes I think we have a hard time fully understanding the real breakdown of American religion and race, so let me show it to you another way. If the United States were represented by 1000 people, here’s what that would look like in terms of race and religion.
That’s 234 White Protestants and 117 White Catholics. Throw Mormons and Orthodox Christians in there and you get a total of 367 White Christians. That’s more than all the non-religious of any race combined. For comparison, if you add all the atheists and agnostics and nothing in particular together, you get 363.
There are still more White Christians than nones in the United States. White Christians used to be fairly mixed politically. In the 1970s, a majority of them were Democrats and about a third were Republicans. In the 1980s, the average White church was evenly mixed, about 45% from both parties.
Today? An entirely different story.
CONTINUE READING: “Given the Rise of the Nones, Why Aren't Democrats Winning Most Elections? — Why Secularization Does Not Lead to Perpetual Liberal Government” by Ryan Burge at the Graphs About Religion Substack newsletter.