December 26, 2024 - 8:00am
Following a comprehensive election loss, the Democratic Party has been left reconsidering its fractured coalition. Now, the New York Times has reported that prominent Democrats of faith — including Texas state representative James Talarico, Georgia Senator Raphael Warnock, and Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro — are urging the party to embrace discussions of religion in politics.
That’s because a “God gap” has opened in American politics, where Republicans have become the party of religious voters, while the Democrats have become the party of non-believers (with the exception of black Christians, who overwhelmingly lean blue). In the Nineties, 63% of Democrats believed in God; today, the figure is 39%. To put this shift in perspective, religious Republicans have gone from 67% to 63% in the same time frame. Sociologist Ryan Burge says that these voters adhere to the “three Bs” of belief, behaviour, and belonging. The country may be becoming more secular, but they are a cohort of reliable voters whom the Democrats ignore at their peril.
In 2024, Pew Research found that the relationship between voters’ religious affiliation and partisanship remains strong, with those of no religion finding a home with the Democrats. Some 84% of atheists and 78% of agnostics lean Democratic, while a majority of Christians of all denominations lean Republican. Among Hispanics in particular, the GOP is continuing to make inroads among evangelicals and Catholics.
Inflation and economic issues may have been on factor behind the electorate abandoning the Democrats in this year’s election. But the increase in people of faith moving to the Right — not just Christians, but Jews and Hindus as well — points to some cultural concerns bubbling beneath the surface, such as abortion, gender and sexual expression, and parental rights. Bridging the two is the perception that liberals are too focused on cultural trends, at the expense of bread-and-butter issues.
The issue for Democrats is that there is a sense that big-city secular elites, the people so closely identified with the party establishment, look down on people of faith. Barack Obama’s infamous 2008 utterance that working-class people in industrial towns decimated by job losses “cling to guns or religion” is frequently invoked as a line in the cultural sand. Apparently failing to heed this lesson, in October Democratic Governor of Michigan Gretchen Whitmer was accused of mocking Holy Communion in a video in which she fed Doritos to a kneeling podcast host, for which she later apologised. It also didn’t help when Joe Biden proclaimed a transgender day of visibility on Easter.
Too often, religious people are characterised as angry old white men shaking their fists about abortion, when people who identify as white Christians now make up less than half of the country. While a secularising nation means that religiously observant people tend to be older than in the past, the more reachable voting blocs for the Democrats among people of faith are younger immigrants, Latinos, black voters, Jews, Hindus and Buddhists who have strayed from the party which would otherwise be their natural home. In an increasingly diverse country, it’s critical that liberals do not alienate these groups.
Winning back enough religious voters is a realistic prospect, and Burge has shown that faith has become the preserve of well-educated, married, middle-class professionals — which has a strong overlap with the Democrats’ key constituency. Donald Trump has gone about this task differently, stitching together a coalition reliant on white voters, particularly evangelicals, religious Latinos, and non-college graduates.
Whether faith-led “Trump conservatives” return to the Democrats is an open question. November’s election continued the post-2016 trend of demographic groups with high rates of observance bleeding votes to the Republicans. This is particularly apparent in Latino communities, such as Miami-Dade County and along the Mexican border. Texas’s Starr County, a high-faith Democratic stronghold for over 100 years, voted for Hillary Clinton by 60 percentage points in 2016. In 2024, it voted for Trump by around 13 points.
For the Democrats to win back support, the party must adopt a strong values-based approach with marginalised and working-class religious voters. Crucially, this means pivoting back to the centre on cultural issues so as not to alienate voters of faith. These are people, after all, who were once reliable Democrats. By creating a space for religious discussion within the party, Democrats can build on exactly the kind of policies required to create a new political coalition that cuts across material, racial and spiritual divides.
Elle Hardy is a freelance journalist who’s reported from North Korea and the former Soviet Union. She is the author of Beyond Belief: How Pentecostal Christianity Is Taking Over the World.
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SubscribeIt seems to me that the Democrats are bent on preaching their brand of secularism to those of a religious nature. They’ll wheel out the “experts” and embrace technology as a way of proving we don’t need religion. And belittle/mock those who believe in a higher force than the White House.
Let them continue, I say. It shows them for who they are. There is something even more unsettling in politicians pretending and pandering to people with faith, than outright disagreeing with them. The secular woke religion was always going to eat itself with all its inconsistencies.
How is it inconsistent?
Also crucial for Democrats to remember: calling voters who you need to win over stupid is not a good electoral strategy.
This shouldn’t have to be said, it should be common sense and yet it seems too complicated a concept for many to get their heads around.
Yes, apparently atheism is no more logical than ‘religion’.
Governments have three core duties in a Christian society: defend the borders, maintain law and order, which includes protecting the right to free speech, and guarantee a stable currency. These are the things we employ them to do. Neglect these duties, as the Biden administration and the UK Conservative Party have, and sooner or later you will be fired. That’s the fundamental lesson of recent events – and Starmer et al need to pay heed to it.
I’m pretty confident humans haven’t changed much in the last 1000 years. Our ancestors weren’t all dumb and unquestioning, and likewise we’re not all smart agents of free will. We were and remain a species guided at least in part by faith. All that has and does change is where and why we invest our faith.
When we organise with fellow faith holders to create conformity of faith, that is religion. When we use the state to enforce the tenants of our faith on others we are relying to the state’s monopoly on violence to propogate our faith.
The Democrats are no less faithful now than they were. Instead many simply have a new faith, albeit one they’d rather not describe as a faith. Following this new faith, a new religion is taking shape. And they want to use the power of the state to make this religion the new orthodoxy. So it turns out progressives are also clinging to religion and guns. And as usual, unconsciously doing something they accuse their opponents of.
As always, your posts are crystal clear – but clarity is one thing that religion lacks. For most people, religion is an emotion, not a clear argument. In many countries there is no conflict between the religion and the state because the religion IS the state. In some cases the state is using the power of the religion to uphold its validity. I suspect that the main problem with UnHerd contributors is that religion cannot be controlled by logic and, therefore, it is something to be feared.
I have never been religious and it couldn’t happen to me because everything I do is controlled by (my own) logic. This logic is not the same as your logic. All around me people have forsaken their logic to become religious – something which happens when they feel vulnerable. In many countries these religious feeling start so young that they can’t be surgically removed. I always remember my shock when I visited a factory in Brazil and the Plant Manager showed me around town. She was very bright, dynamic, logical, etc, but every time we passed a church she crossed herself.
I always remember my shock when I visited a factory in Brazil and the Plant Manager showed me around town. She was very bright, dynamic, logical, etc, but every time we passed a church she crossed herself. – Is it a sin? Does it make her stupid or fanatical? I’m afraid you’re much more fanatical when you were shocked by her behavior.
I am not a believer, but on average I trust Orthodox Jews or Christians more than atheists like you.
Both Socrates (according to Plato) and Satan (according to the book of Job) had the unwelcome but necessary task of testing their client/ victims integrity . Give them a shovel and see the kind of hole they dig themselves into
How clever and reasonable you must be in your own mind, then …..
Agree with much of that. However, as a secularist (to simplify an essentially spiritual humanism) i absolutely don’t fear religion itself, but those who either hide behind it or use it for nefarious purposes; which unfortunately, it lends itself to.
i absolutely don’t fear religion itself, but those who either hide behind it or use it for nefarious purposes; which unfortunately, it lends itself to.
.
Atheists never do that. They are angels. Like Pol Pot!
I’ve upvoted that as the winner of the Stupid 2024 contest.
You’ve got five days to also get second place. I reckon you’ll do it…
You are boring, my dear friend
What nonsense! Atheists choose their own ground and refuse to consider evidence which undermines their incredibly narrow thinking they choose to describe as ‘logic”. And how can any faithful Christian support the Democrat line on abortion?
This is a remarkably incoherent position. When you refer to “your logic” you’re actually referring to “your truth.” This implies not a reliance on deductive or inductive reasoning but on subjectivism (which is almost certainly contaminated with emotional bias).
So it appears you see the world no different than the so-called unenlightened rubes that you mock for being irrational.
The idea that everything you do is ‘controlled by your own logic’ is so obviously absurd and illogical.
Secular humanists tend to have a deep faith in their own individual agency, self-government and human agency at large, which is no less irrational than any article of religious faith.
And yes, Humanism is a religion – a particularly shallow and glib off-shoot from post-Reformation Christianity.
The new religion taking shape is Climate Change and it’s being promoted in and by the CofE! In my Church this new religion is mentioned more often than God as it has become the “new religion” to aspire to.
It’s about your priest, not about your faith
Just stopping being anti-religion would be a step forward. This is hard for the Democrats as their leadership tends to be from elite schools which are explicitly anti-Christian.
I think you are confused. You mean: “Just stopping being anti-Christian would be a step forward.” You are effectively saying that Religion=Christian, which it clearly doesn’t – except maybe on UnHerd.
It’s not that “Religion=Christian,” it’s just that when the Democrats say things that are anti-religious, they are generally explicitly anti-Christian. Although their embrace of the trans agenda and anti-Israel stances have also driven off Muslims and Jews respectively. But, among those Americans who claim religious beliefs, the majority are still Christian, so it would behoove the Democrats to stop being anti-Christian along with moving to the center on social issues.
The Leftists only hate Christianity and Judaism. They embrace radical Islam.
I thought the democrat elites were pretty religious. Just a very different religion from the “usual” ones.
A surprising number of Leftists leaders had religious training in their backgrounds.
There is an irony in urban hyper-liberals, who keep on telling us they represent liberal ”diversity”, in fact representing an increasingly homogeneous group of people like themselves, with increasing intolerance to diversity of opinion or conflicts with their own beliefs.
While Trump, who the same urban liberals keep on telling us represents an exclusive authoritarian nationalism comparible to 20th century fascism, in fact has been able to knit together a genuinely multi-ethnic coalition.
If anyone now shows the benefits, strengths and possibilities of ‘multiculturalism’ it is not the people screaming from the rooftops about it — it is in fact Trump.
They merely want to project their White Guilt onto everyone else as none will give up their (in their own minds) white privilege,
I think the public validation that upscale progressives (champagne socialists) demand for being “good people” is a convenient excuse to justify their actions. Their real goal is simply to access the treasury and arbitrarily transfer payments to groups that help them keep power.
They taxonomize people by groups because they think labeling enough groups as “oppressed” will give them a permanent coalition. Look no further than the student loan giveaway. Progressives are responsible for the skyrocketing cost of university tuition but instead they blame “society” and declare themselves Robinhood.
Everything they do follows the path: Create an unsustainable cost bubble, blame society, grant “relief” to a coalition of voters and label anyone pointing it out as a bootlicker for the “oligarch class.”
The “atheist” is not godless. His “god” is himself.
Two spectacular own goals. Although I don’t think these acts were done deliberately to insult Christians, it’s hard to come up with a comprehensible reason for doing them at all. I’ll fall back on the best remaining motive — stupidity.
There is a go gap because the party is hostile to religion, specifically Christianity. Dems dare not question Islam.
Historically the election was close – the 3rd closest. And at a time where incumbents the World over are getting turfed out or badly mauled. It’s not going to take too much to flip the other way.
Clearly the Democrats got to do better in some keys areas – getting a candidate without some silly stuff in their woke locker would help. Democrats will have more time to pick the right candidate than Biden gave them this time. It’ll be a bloke, who goes to Church, has some blue collar roots and is largely mainstream.
But the next election primarily going to be about broken promises and a corrupt Kleptocracy. The anger will build.
Wishful thinking, I’m afraid. The wind has changed. The Democrats will be out of power for a generation after the Biden fiasco. Trudeau is next, and then pretty well every country in Europe, followed by the UK in 2029. Neo-liberalism is over. You guys just got too greedy.
Which is another way of saying that insulting timeless values and the people who adhere to them is a short cut to losing elections.
Joe says the Bidens are very religious, that he’s a Catholic and son Hunter is a Crystal Methodist.
Very good…
“From the collectivist standpoint, alternatively, all higher identities can be represented as nothing more than partial and corrupt versions of the ultimate homogenous collective—and, therefore, as impediments to that end, to be suppressed, fragmented, demonised, and otherwise destroyed.
The collectivist can tempt the anarchists with the eradication of marriage, offering free love; of family, offering freedom from mature, adult responsibilities; of work, offering distributed wealth, without effort; of religion, offering freedom from restrictive superstition. As all the meaning and purpose once contained in those intermediary identities is thus destroyed, allegiance to the state becomes both overwhelmingly tempting and increasingly all-consuming.”
From the compelling research paper by Pageau and Peterson:
https://www.arc-research.org/research-papers/the-subsidiary-hierarchy
I’m afraid the self-defeating identity politics of grief overlooks the seriousness of religious groupings. By the way I am not religious although I see the benefits of regular community gatherings and acknowledge benefits in intent of religious individuals. Churches and Mosques do many good works in poorer communities.
Harris campaigning on a USP of protecting/enhancing women’s reproductive rights (assume she had reverted to the established definition of woman) was so f*****g tin eared.
Firstly, the decision sits better at State Level and secondly in states where there is a closish split they got or will get their own single issue vote.
However, far more importantly religious people identify as Christians be it Catholic, Evangelical, traditional Protestant, Baptist as well as Muslims of all hue see Abortion sitting anywhere between highly distasteful to murder. And many don’t want it ‘On Tap’.
Therefore the Trump position (i.e. legal with limitations) was far closer to these groups that Harris’s style 1990s position.
The Democrats living in East and West Coast Ivory towers really don’t have a clue.
They have. People whose religion is race, gender and or climate are true believers in the Democrat party.
I think this article is asking the wrong question. The question isn’t “Can the Democrats win back religious voters?” The question is “Are there any religious voters to win back?”
Any discussion of “values” without specifity falls into the Harris word salad of nonsense. Going after votes by pretending to care about so-called “values” will be as successful as the Harris campaign and as appealing as her cackle.