A Republican was twice as likely to be raised a evangelical than a Democrat. And much more likely to be raised a mainline Protestant.
Interestingly, both groups were just as likely to be raised Catholic or without a religious affiliation. pic.twitter.com/QNd6hpDo2b
— Ryan Burge 📊 (@ryanburge) February 2, 2020
Here is one of those #DUH statements about religion in America: Journalists and political activists have been talking about the “God gap” (also known as the “pew gap”) between the two major political parties for several decades now.
Here’s another obvious statement: There is no sign that this debate will end anytime soon.
Most of the time, people argue about (all together now) white evangelical Protestants — when the real swing voters in American life are ordinary Sunday-morning Catholics (see this GetReligion post related to this subject).
However, GetReligion contributor Ryan Burge has — on Twitter and in his Religion in Public blog posts — been doing a bang-up job that today’s Republican Party is packed with all kinds of white churchgoers, not just evangelicals. While we think of Mainline Protestant denominations as culturally “liberal,” that is more true about the ordained folks in the pulpits and the professionals in the ecclesiastical bureaucracies than in the pews.
This brings me to two Burge charts that are really interesting when studied together.
First, consider this statement with the first chart:
A Republican was twice as likely to be raised a evangelical than a Democrat. And much more likely to be raised a mainline Protestant.
In other words, is there some kind of “cradle gap” the precedes the “pew gap”?
Also, how important are these trends anyway, for journalists who are trying to understand the various cultural camps inside today’s Republican and Democratic parties?
That leads us to Burge chart No. 2 for today:
One third of the modern Republican Party is white evangelicals.
There is no religious group that comes even close to that among the Democrats. The “nothing in particulars” are 18.8%, but good luck organizing them. Mainliners come next, but they are just 11.2% pic.twitter.com/iRk0LhcMbP
— Ryan Burge 📊 (@ryanburge) February 21, 2020
Now, there is no ONE religious group among Democrats that has the kind of statistical (and grassroots) clout that white evangelicals have among Republicans. But what if you add some of the camps together?
But I chimed in on Twitter with a question about that:
Now, I realize that a coalition of atheists, agnostics and “nones” may not be the easiest pack of people to motivate, in terms of political activism or even showing up at the polls. Still, if you combine those numbers with the remaining believers in the “religious left” — a flock that almost certainly has similar views on moral and cultural issues — you have a big, big power bass in the Democratic Party.
Years ago, I interviewed two New York City academics who were watching that trend and pinned this label on this niche: “The Anti-Fundamentalist Voters.” Today, the word “evangelical” plugs into that label just fine.
How does this affect the dynamics in the current primary season?
Stay tuned. Bernie Sanders and Mike Bloomberg (and even Mayor Pete Buttigieg) will need to visit some African-American megachurches sooner or later.
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