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The Paradox of Race, Religion, and Representation: The Persistent Influence of White Evangelicals and the Decline of White Religious Voters
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 April 2018
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- Words of Wisdom
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- Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and Politics , Volume 3 , Special Issue 1: Race, Religion, Gender and the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election , March 2018 , pp. 107 - 111
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- Copyright © The Race, Ethnicity, and Politics Section of the American Political Science Association 2018
Footnotes
1. Robert P. Jones. 2017. “Trump Can't Reverse the Decline of White Christian America.” The Atlantic 4 July 2017. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/07/robert-jones-white-christian-america/532587/ (accessed on February 2, 2018).
2. Scholars often study race and representation without engaging religion (e.g., Grose Reference Grose2011; Grose, Husser, and Yoshinaka Reference Grose, Husser and Yoshinaka2010); or scholars of religion often do not engage race (Wald and Wilcox Reference Wald and Wilcox2006).
References
REFERENCES
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“If you look at the numbers of people who vote and who lives [sic] in the country and who Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton want to bring in to the country, this is the last election when we even have a chance to vote for somebody who will stand up for godly moral principles. This is it.”—Former congresswoman Michelle Bachmann (R-MN), describing the 2016 election and imploring voters to vote for Donald Trump.Footnote 1
Eighty-one percent of white evangelicals voted for Donald Trump in 2016 (Wong Reference Wong2018). This cohesion among a racial and religious group for one candidate and one party is higher than almost all social groups. Yet, this group is not growing as a proportion of the electorate; a large proportion of white Americans rarely or never attend religious services; and scholars rarely study un-churched whites. The 2016 election of Donald Trump, a person who does not appear to frequently attend religious services himself, was due to core support among white evangelicals. Among whites who do not identify as evangelical, Hillary Clinton received 59% of the vote (Wong Reference Wong2018). Among African Americans, Latinos, and Asian Americans who identify as born-again evangelicals and those who do not, large majorities did not support Trump and voted for Clinton (Wong Reference Wong2018). Further, people of color who attend or who rarely attend religious services voted for Clinton in 2016 (according to the 2016 Collaborative Multi-racial Post-election Survey or CMPS).
If trends in religiosity, evangelism, and support for the parties by race and ethnicity continue, Republicans will have difficulty garnering popular vote majorities in presidential elections. Similarly, in legislative elections without constituencies that are largely white and evangelical, Republicans may find it more challenging to win elections. The decline of white evangelicals as a proportion of the U.S. population—and the overall decline in religious attendance among whites—has broad implications for political representation and voter mobilization. Evangelism and religious attendance are proportionally higher among racial and ethnic minorities in the United States than among whites, but minority groups—even if they regularly attend religious services—are much less likely to support Republicans. It is time for political scientists to examine the intersection of race, religion, and other categories (Hancock Reference Hancock2007; Phillips Reference Phillips2018).Footnote 2 There is an emerging Democratic majority coalition of non-religious whites and religious and non-religious people of color in the United States. Yet white evangelicals, a numeric minority, have outsized influence and significant mobilization in recent elections.
AN INCREASING PERCENTAGE OF AMERICANS RARELY OR NEVER ATTEND RELIGIOUS SERVICES
When former Republican Representative Michelle Bachmann lamented that 2016 may be the last election for “godly moral principles,” she implicitly meant for whites. The U.S. electorate has secularized substantially in the last decade, and whites are more secular than are people of color. For many years, a majority of Americans regularly attended religious services. According to the American National Election Study (ANES), from 1990 to 2002, less than half of Americans said they rarely or never attended religious services. Beginning in 2004, 50% of Americans reported that they never or rarely attended religious services. By 2012, 58% of Americans said they rarely or never attended religious services.
Further, there is a decline in the proportion of evangelical whites in the United States. The proportion of the public identifying as evangelical has declined slightly between 2007 and 2014. Among those who identify as evangelical, whites were 81% of Protestant evangelicals in 2007, and this declined 5 percentage points to 76% in 2014 (Pew Research Center 2015). Declines in white evangelism were offset somewhat by a greater proportion of U.S. evangelicals identifying as Latino (Pew Research Center 2015). While large majorities of evangelical voters are white, the proportion of white evangelicals in the U.S. population is in decline.
RELIGIOUS IDENTIFICATION AMONG MINORITIES IS HIGHER THAN WHITES
Racial groups attend religious services at differential rates. While religious attendance and evangelism among whites are in decline, it is also declining for most minority groups (Pew Research Center 2015). However, this decline is not as steep as minority groups are still more likely than whites to attend religious services. In the 2016 CMPS, 43% of whites reported “hardly ever” or “never” attending religious services. Only 33% of African Americans, 37% of Latinos, and 39% of Asian Americans, in contrast, reported hardly ever or never attending religious services. People of color are more frequent religious attenders than are whites.
WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN FOR VOTER MOBILIZATION AND POLITICAL REPRESENTATION?
White evangelicals are declining, as is white church attendance, yet white evangelicals were perhaps the most cohesive and influential social group to support Trump and the Republican party in 2016. White voters who regularly attend religious services are much more likely to vote and be civically engaged (Timpone Reference Timpone1998). As more whites drop out of religious practice, we may anticipate a decline in white voter mobilization. Yet, these un-churched whites are the ones less likely to support Republicans, so their potential decline in the electorate may only serve to magnify the proportionate effect of the mobilized white evangelical population that regularly attends church services. These countervailing trends help Republicans in that white evangelicals may make up a much broader proportion of the electorate than their numbers in the overall population, but the decline in white evangelism could also be a harbinger of Democratic electoral dominance in the future.
Among minority groups, religious attendance is also in decline, meaning that there may also be demobilization of African Americans, Latinos, and Asian Americans. However, these groups are much more likely to attend religious services than are whites, and this is especially the case for African Americans and Latinos. As religious attendance is a mobilizer of voter turnout (Calhoun-Brown Reference Calhoun-Brown1996; Gerber, Gruber, and Hungerman Reference Gerber, Gruber and Hungerman2016; Harris Reference Harris1994; Jones-Correa and Leal Reference Jones-Correa and Leal2001; Pantoja, Ramirez, and Segura Reference Pantoja, Ramirez and Segura2001; Timpone Reference Timpone1998), as long as voters of color continue to favor Democrats, we could see surprising increases in minority voter mobilization in the years ahead if minority church attendance remains high. Of course, there are many structural and other barriers to minority voter participation that could inhibit the role of greater differential religious participation in differential mobilization.
Finally, what are the implications for political representation? Republicans in Congress represent overwhelmingly white constituencies, and their districts are as white today as they were 25 years ago (Grose Reference Grose2017). Democratic members of Congress represent more racially and ethnically diverse constituencies than they did decades ago (Grose Reference Grose2017). Congressional Republican constituencies, especially their primary constituencies, will frequently be white evangelicals and whites who regularly attend church. Democrats, in contrast, have minority constituents and non-religious whites as their primary constituencies.
Without a consideration of race and religion, political scientists and election observers could misread the electorate. Trump did not win in 2016 because of working-class voters. He won, in part, because of evangelical whites. If current voting patterns hold, a coalition of non-religious whites, and religious and non-religious people of color could provide an enduring popular vote majority for Democratic candidates and spell trouble for Republican candidates. Yet, white evangelicals were arguably the most influential racial and religious group in the 2016 election.