The Shift of the Religious and Political Landscape in America
6 June 2023 |
According to an article in Politico, there has been an 11% decrease in Americans associating with religion throughout the last decade, a shift with profound implications for the political landscape. This change affects the “God Gap” – the perception that the Republican Party champions religious individuals, particularly Christians, while Democrats have grown increasingly secular. This trend, however, is not uniformly distributed. According to the Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies, some regions retain strong religious adherence, while others have significantly distanced themselves from organized religion.
Recent reports by the Pew Research Center document America’s religious decline and create hypothetical scenarios of how it could change within the next 50 years. “What if Christians keep leaving religion at the same rate observed in recent years?” Pew says in an article in September 2022. They add that if the trend continues, “Christians could make up less than half of the U.S. population within a few decades.”
The 2020 U.S. Religion Census reveals religion’s decline in the central part of the country. In the last decade, Democrats have made gains in areas where religious adherence is dwindling, and Republicans are gaining in areas where religious organizations are adding members. The industrial Midwest, including Rust Belt states such as Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, is becoming less religious, a trend that may favor Democrats in the 2024 elections.
Specific counties in Michigan and Pennsylvania illustrate this trend, with a drop in religious adherents and a concurrent rise in Democratic support. For example, in Michigan’s Oakland County, the religious population fell by 2% in the last decade, while President Joe Biden won the county by over double Barack Obama’s margin eight years earlier. Similarly, Pennsylvania’s Bucks County saw a nearly 18% decline in the religiously affiliated population between 2010 and 2020, and Biden won the county by 5 points in 2020.
However, Republicans also see promising trends in the Religion Census. In Florida, 49 out of 67 counties experienced growth in religious adherents. Despite Democratic victories in previous years, Biden underperformed in Miami-Dade County in 2020, where religious affiliation grew from 40% in 2010 to 52% in 2020. A similar pattern appears in Texas, where counties close to the Mexico border, such as Zapata County, saw substantial religious growth, challenging predictions of Texas turning Democratic in the next decade.
The increasing Hispanic immigrant population, which is highly religious and leans culturally conservative, contributes to these changes. Democrats have struggled to capture the Hispanic vote in recent elections, especially in highly religious areas. This suggests that the Democrats may continue gaining ground in predominantly white, increasingly secular suburban counties, while Republicans could leverage religious shifts to resist Democratic advances in Texas and Florida. As the religious landscape continues to evolve, both parties must navigate these shifting dynamics to succeed in future elections.