The Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) recently released a "2020 census of American religion" breaking down, to the county level, the religious affiliation of Americans. Since election results are routinely reported at the county level, it's possible to judge how religious identification affects voting, and the answer appears to be: profoundly. Sometime within the past ten years or so, the percentage of American adults who are white Christians dropped below 50 percent. In the counties carried by Trump, however, white Christians are on average just about exactly two-thirds of the population. Meanwhile, in the Biden counties, about a third are white Christians, a third nonwhite Christians, and a third "other"—Jews and other atheists, Archie Bunker might say. (Actually, by far the biggest group within the "other" category is Americans who, asked about religious affiliation, reply "none"; these "nones," according to PRRI, are now 23 percent of all adults.)
The differences are amplified if one sifts out white evangelical Christians or looks at counties that went for one or the other candidate by a wide margin. White evangelicals, for example, were 34 percent of the population in counties that voted for Trump, but only 15 percent of the population in Biden counties. In 15 of Biden's 20 best counties, almost all in large urban areas, white Christians were less than a quarter of the population. They are about 45 percent of the national population. Trump won more than a thousand counties by at least 50 percent of the vote—by more, that is, than 75-25—and, in these, almost all small and rural, white Christians were more than 70 percent of the population.
PRRI also breaks down religious affiliation by age. On this front, the news isn't good for Republicans. About two-thirds of Americans 65 or older are white Christians, a near match for the religious profile of Trump voters. But around two-thirds of Americans under 30 are something other than "white Christian," same as the religious profile of Democratic voters. It's not hard to tell which brand, going forward, is apt to grow its market share. Voter suppression, even when augmented by some of the rickety machinery of our 18th-century democracy, seems like quite a feeble response to demographic change in America. Put to one side the moral taint: just as a political strategy, making it harder to vote resembles a sacrifice bunt in the half inning before your bullpen faces Murderer's Row. Make America Great Again? Going to be too few dogs to hear that whistle.
Comments