The non-religious are now the country’s largest religious voting bloc
More
American voters than ever say they are not religious, making the
religiously unaffiliated the nation's biggest voting bloc by
faith for the first time in a presidential election year. This
marks a dramatic shift from just eight years ago, when the
non-religious were roundly outnumbered by Catholics, white mainline
Protestants and white evangelical Protestants.
These
numbers come from a
new Pew Research Center survey,
which finds that "religious 'nones,' who have been growing
rapidly as
a share of the U.S. population, now constitute one-fifth of all
registered voters and more than a quarter of Democratic and
Democratic-leaning registered voters." That represents a 50
percent increase in the proportion of non-religious voters
compared with eight years ago, when they made up just 14 percent
of the overall electorate.
"In
2008, religious 'nones' were outnumbered or at parity with white
mainline Protestants and white Catholics," the survey's
lead researcher, Greg Smith, said in an interview. "Today,
'nones' outnumber both of those groups."
The
growth of the non-religious -- about 54 percent of whom are
Democrats or lean Democratic, compared with 23 percent at least
leaning Republican -- could provide a political counterweight
to white evangelical Protestants, a historically powerful voting bloc
for Republicans. In 2016, 35 percent of Republican voters identify
as white evangelicals, while 28 percent of Democratic voters say
they have no religion at all.
But
while the religiously unaffiliated are making up a larger share of
American voters, that doesn't necessarily mean that that will
translate into actual votes. Exit polls of people who actually
cast votes -- as opposed to preelection polls of registered voters --
have traditionally shown that the unaffiliated underperform at the
ballot box relative to their raw numbers.
For
instance, in the 2012 election, the unaffiliated made up 18 percent
of registered voters in preelection polls but only
12 percent of the people who actually voted,
as measured in post-election exit polls. Some of this difference
may be due to the different ways the two polls ask
religious-affiliation questions, but Pew's researchers say that the
underperformance of the non-religious is a very real phenomenon.
"While
the group is growing rapidly in the general public, its growth has
been much less dramatic in the electorate," Pew's Smith said.
"It could be the 'nones' are not connected, almost by
definition, to religious institutions, which can play an important
role in spurring turnout and interest in politics."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/07/14/the-non-religious-are-now-the-countrys-largest-religious-voting-bloc/
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