US secular voters - FFRF poll

[lpetrich]

FFRF releases major secular voter poll: ‘We are the real values voters’ - Freedom From Religion Foundation

Major surveys consistently show that 26 percent of the adult population are either atheists, agnostics or identify as “Nones,” having no religious identification, a demographic that now outnumbers Catholics (at 20 percent).

“We Nones — religiously unaffiliated adults in America — are now the largest ‘denomination’ by religious identification,” says FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor. “Yet most candidates and media outlets focus their time on traditional religious groups, and ignore this major demographic. We’re releasing this voter poll so that our views will be heard, too.”

Fully 98 percent of the respondents are registered voters, 70 percent of whom identify as atheist, 9 percent as humanist or freethinker and 7 percent as agnostic (with 4.5 percent preferring another term). Average age is 64. More than half (56 percent) identify their political voting pattern as Democratic, 17 percent as “progressive” and 16 percent as “independent” (with 1.9 percent Libertarian, 1.4 percent Republican and 3 percent Socialist and a smattering of other).

Numbers are percentages. The numbers for all (adult) Americans are from various polls that the article links to.
[TABLE="class: grid"]
[TR]
[TD]Issue[/TD]
[TD]All[/TD]
[TD]Secular[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="colspan: 3"]Hot-Button Social Issues[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Support Women's Rights[/TD]
[TD]79[/TD]
[TD]99.6[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Support Legal Abortion[/TD]
[TD]75[/TD]
[TD]98.8[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Support Same-Sex Marriage[/TD]
[TD]61[/TD]
[TD]98.9[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Support LGBTQ Civil Rights[/TD]
[TD]70[/TD]
[TD]98.9[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Support Medically-Assisted Dignified Dying[/TD]
[TD]73[/TD]
[TD]99.2[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Oppose Death Penalty[/TD]
[TD]39[/TD]
[TD]68[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Support "Rational Gun Control"[/TD]
[TD]60[/TD]
[TD]94[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="colspan: 3"]Civic / Economic / Social-Policy Issues[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Registered to Vote[/TD]
[TD]79[/TD]
[TD]98[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Support Universal Vote by Mail[/TD]
[TD]69[/TD]
[TD]94[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Support Universal Healthcare Coverage[/TD]
[TD]66[/TD]
[TD]94[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Support Guaranteed Minimum Income[/TD]
[TD]45[/TD]
[TD]69.9[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Support Free/Reduced Public-College Tuition[/TD]
[TD]58[/TD]
[TD]82.9[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="colspan: 3"]Racial / Police / Statehood Issues[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Racial Discrimination a Major Problem[/TD]
[TD]76[/TD]
[TD]96[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Support Slavery Reparations[/TD]
[TD]20[/TD]
[TD]45[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Support DC Statehood[/TD]
[TD]43[/TD]
[TD]77[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Support Puerto Rico Statehood[/TD]
[TD]54[/TD]
[TD]74.9[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Support Police/Prison Reform[/TD]
[TD]69[/TD]
[TD]95[/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]

 

[Metaphor]

Your link goes to a front page and not the article, which is here:
https://ffrf.org/news/news-releases...ular-voter-poll-we-are-the-real-values-voters

 

[lpetrich]

Your link goes to a front page and not the article, which is here:
https://ffrf.org/news/news-releases...ular-voter-poll-we-are-the-real-values-voters

Thanx. I fixed it.

 

[ronburgundy]

I'm hoping that the 30%-40% who are some form left of center politically are voting Dem for the presidency on Tuesday. I'm guessing that they don't want to identify as Dem and don't commit inherently to voting Dem, but wind up voting that way usually.

An interesting fact is that 58% of the respondents were over age 60 and 75% were over age 50. That makes their progressiveness even more striking since most people that old skew to the right on those issues. On a negative note, that means FFRF is having little appeal to younger people, which may be more b/c there are so many other atheist organizations or options today compared to 40 years ago when FFRF was created.

 

[Metaphor]

I'm hoping that the 30%-40% who are some form left of center politically are voting Dem for the presidency on Tuesday. I'm guessing that they don't want to identify as Dem and don't commit inherently to voting Dem, but wind up voting that way usually.

If you are talking about FFRF members, the breakdown is:

More than half (56 percent) identify their political voting pattern as Democratic, 17 percent as “progressive” and 16 percent as “independent” (with 1.9 percent Libertarian, 1.4 percent Republican and 3 percent Socialist and a smattering of other).

 

[lpetrich]

Assessing The Religious (And Non-Religious) Vote In 2020 | Americans United for Separation of Church and State

One of the more interesting demographic groups is also among the fastest growing: Americans who say they have no particular religion. These “nones” broke heavily for Biden, with 72% voting for the former vice president.

One must ask what sort of political conservatives are represented among the unaffiliated.

If messageboard polls are any guide, the main sort seems to be right-libertarianism. Its most prominent supporter was Ayn Rand, herself an atheist.

Are there any nonreligious counterparts of the Religious Right? If there are any, they don't seem very prominent.

 

[TomC]

Assessing The Religious (And Non-Religious) Vote In 2020 | Americans United for Separation of Church and State

One of the more interesting demographic groups is also among the fastest growing: Americans who say they have no particular religion. These “nones” broke heavily for Biden, with 72% voting for the former vice president.

One must ask what sort of political conservatives are represented among the unaffiliated.

If messageboard polls are any guide, the main sort seems to be right-libertarianism. Its most prominent supporter was Ayn Rand, herself an atheist.

Are there any nonreligious counterparts of the Religious Right? If there are any, they don't seem very prominent.

I think that this is why the secular vote isn't taken very seriously by politicians. We just don't have the kind of organizations or central authority that even small religious denominations have.
Tom

 

[Jarhyn]

Assessing The Religious (And Non-Religious) Vote In 2020 | Americans United for Separation of Church and State

One of the more interesting demographic groups is also among the fastest growing: Americans who say they have no particular religion. These “nones” broke heavily for Biden, with 72% voting for the former vice president.

One must ask what sort of political conservatives are represented among the unaffiliated.

If messageboard polls are any guide, the main sort seems to be right-libertarianism. Its most prominent supporter was Ayn Rand, herself an atheist.

Are there any nonreligious counterparts of the Religious Right? If there are any, they don't seem very prominent.

I think that this is why the secular vote isn't taken very seriously by politicians. We just don't have the kind of organizations or central authority that even small religious denominations have.
Tom

Mostly because we are kind of by definition a group who does not accept that truth comes top-down from authority figures.

 

[TomC]

I think that this is why the secular vote isn't taken very seriously by politicians. We just don't have the kind of organizations or central authority that even small religious denominations have.
Tom

Mostly because we are kind of by definition a group who does not accept that truth comes top-down from authority figures.

Oh, I understand that. But I also think it's one of the subtle reasons that our government tends to be more religious and conservative than the population at large.
Tom

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Assessing The Religious (And Non-Religious) Vote In 2020 | Americans United for Separation of Church and State

One of the more interesting demographic groups is also among the fastest growing: Americans who say they have no particular religion. These “nones” broke heavily for Biden, with 72% voting for the former vice president.

One must ask what sort of political conservatives are represented among the unaffiliated.

If messageboard polls are any guide, the main sort seems to be right-libertarianism. Its most prominent supporter was Ayn Rand, herself an atheist.

Are there any nonreligious counterparts of the Religious Right? If there are any, they don't seem very prominent.

I think that this is why the secular vote isn't taken very seriously by politicians. We just don't have the kind of organizations or central authority that even small religious denominations have.
Tom

Exactly. We're cats. We aren't any easier to court than we are to herd.

 

[lpetrich]

There Are Now More Atheists in State and Federal Office Than Ever Before | Hemant Mehta | Friendly Atheist | Patheos

He noted that all the members of the  Congressional Freethought Caucus got re-elected. Here are its 14 members, with their victory margins in the recent election:

• Jared Huffman (CA-2, San Rafael) – co-chair -- 51.4%
• Jerry McNerney (CA-9, Stockton) -- 15.2%
• Zoe Lofgren (CA-19, San Jose) -- 43.4%
• Eleanor Holmes Norton (Delegate, DC) -- 83.3%
• Hank Johnson (GA-4, Decatur) -- 60.2%
• Sean Casten (IL-6, Chicago) -- 7.4%
• Jamie Raskin (MD-8, Takoma Park) – co-chair -- 36.8%
• Dan Kildee (MI-5, Flint Township) -- 12.7%
• Rashida Tlaib (MI-13, Detroit) -- 59.5%
• Susan Wild (PA-07) -- 3.8%
• Steve Cohen (TN-9, Memphis) -- 57.3%
• Don Beyer (VA-8, Arlington) -- 52.0%
• Pramila Jayapal (WA-7, Seattle) -- 66.4%
• Mark Pocan (WI-2, Madison) -- 39.4%

This caucus, founded "to foster science and reason-based solutions and to defend the secular character of government", seems ecumenical enough to include a practicing Muslim: Rashida Tlaib.

HM then mentioned 10+ nonreligious state senators and 45+ nonreligious state representatives.

HM knows of no nonreligious Republicans in elected office.

 

[lpetrich]

Hemant Mehta maintains a list of All the Non-Religious Candidates Running for State and Federal Office in 2020

Humanist PAC Marks Gains for Atheists and Freethinkers – and Hope for All Americans in Future Elections | Freethought Equality Fund
notes
Secular Elected Officials — Center for Freethought Equality

How many in state legislatures identified as atheist / agnostic / secular:

• <2016: 5
• 2016: 17
• 2018: 47
• 2020: 63 (includes Federal)

The cfequality page mentioned two Federal ones: Jared Huffman D-CA-02 (2013-) "humanist and agnostic" and Jamie Raskin D-MD-08 (2017-): "emphatically Jewish" and "humanist". JR once told the WaPo that “I’ve always described myself as a humanist, because I think it’s the greatest philosophical movement in human history. Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, Benjamin Franklin, Albert Einstein, they’re my heroes. … I believe that there are humanists of every religious stripe.”

 

[lpetrich]

2020 Endorsements | Freethought Equality Fund for 2020
I checked on their fates

• AZ-04 - Delina DiSanto - recovering Catholic - lost
• CA-02 - Jared Huffman - humanist and agnostic - won
• CA-16 - Kim Williams - agnostic - lost
• CA-53 - Janessa Goldbeck - agnostic - lost
• CO-04 - Ike McCorkle - Unitarian - lost
• CO-05 - Jillian Freeland - humanist - lost
• GA-10 - Clyde Elrod - Christian and an ally of the atheist and humanist community - lost
• GA-11 - Dana Barrett - culturally Jewish and an ally of the atheist and humanist community - lost
• IL-03 - Marie Newman - Catholic and a member of a multi-faith household, and is an ally of the atheist and humanist community - won
• IN-01 - Ryan Farrar - raised Southern Baptist, now a humanist - lost
• MD-08 - Jamie Raskin - Jewish - won
• MI-07 - Sam Branscum - humanist - lost
• NC-11 - Steve Woodsmall - spiritual more than religious - lost
• NE-01 - Barbara Ramsey - atheist - lost
• NE-SEN - Angie Philips - an atheist and a humanist - lost
• NY-01 - Nancy Goroff - secular Jew - lost
• NY-27 - Nate McMurray - Christian and an ally of the atheist and humanist community - lost
• OH-16 - Aaron Godfrey - atheist - lost
• SD-01 - Whitney Raver - spiritual but not religious - lost
• TN-01 - Christopher Rowe - agnostic - lost
• TX-13 - Greg Sagan - religiously unaffiliated - lost
• TX-23 - Liz Wahl - withdrew
• TX-23 - Jaime Escuder - Unitarian - lost
• TX-26 - Carol Iannuzzi - Unitarian - lost
• TX-31 - Donna Imam - ? - lost

As far as I can tell, they all ran as Democrats.

 

[lpetrich]

Secular Americans Are the New “Values Voters” and This Election Proved It | Hemant Mehta | Friendly Atheist | Patheos
notes
Secular 'values voters' are becoming an electoral force in the US – just look closely at 2020's results by Phil Zuckerman
His home page: Phil Zuckerman | Faculty Profile | Academics | Pitzer College

Power of the ‘Nones’ in a growing religious gap, or why sex ed passed so easily | The Seattle Times
Republican WA Gov candidate Loren Culp was not surprised that he lost to Democrat Jay Inslee. But sex education was another story.

“Sixty percent of the population of this state wants the comprehensive sex ed bill, really?” Culp asked the crowd, which booed. “I’ve not met anyone who wants that. Yet they’re telling us it’s passed? You’ve got to be kidding me!”

This seemed to be a widely shared reaction across the political right. Referendum 90, to mandate sex education in the schools, had seemed in the spring to be one of those issues where leftists had just meddled too far into the affairs of parents and families. Opponents swiftly gathered twice the signatures needed to repeal the Legislature’s bill, and the Republican party put money in and ran with the repeal movement as a can’t-miss rallying cry against overbearing government.

So it seemed to stun everyone how easily such a formerly hot-button topic could sail through. Sex ed won by about 16 percentage points and carried 14 counties, including two in Eastern Washington.

The author then got into a "religion gap". Voter Analysis | Elections 2020 | Fox News has a breakdown of the WA Gov race. By religion, the voters are:

• Protestant 24% - R 59% D 41%
• Catholic 14% - R 50% D 50%
• Mormon - 3%
• Other Christian 15% - R 60% D 39%
• Jewish 2%
• Muslim 1%
• Something else 9% - D 72% R 28%
• None 34% - D 76% R 24%

Back to the Seattle Times. It stated that evangelicals were 19%. Also, 45% of WA voters never attend a house of worship.

"The campaign to repeal the sex ed law was energized by churches and anti-abortion groups, and backed by the Washington State Catholic Conference."

A few decades ago, the Religious Right would like have won on such issues. But it now lost on this issue, at least.

"The voter survey suggested the candidates’ scientific approaches to the coronavirus — or lack of it, in the cases of Trump and Culp — also played a role in these enormous gaps."

However, "The campaign in favor of sex ed got a slew of endorsements from liberal church leaders, so religion did weigh in on both sides."

 

[lpetrich]

Meanwhile, voters in Oregon – another Pacific Northwestern state that contains one of the most secular populations in the country – passed Measure 110, the first ever statewide law to decriminalize the possession and personal use of drugs.

This aligns with research showing that nonreligious Americans are much more likely to support the decriminalization of drugs than their religious peers. For instance, a 2016 study from Christian polling firm Barna found that 66% of evangelicals believe that all drugs should be illegal as did 43% of other Christians, but only 17% of Americans with no religious faith held such a view.

Secular Americans are more likely to accept the reality of human-generated climate change than religious ones, and PZ suggests that this may have led to the success of a ballot measure supporting mitigation efforts in Denver CO - it got 62% of the vote. That city is one of the most secular in the US.

Meanwhile voters in California – another area of relative secularity – passed Proposition 14 supporting the funding of stem cell research, the state being one of only a handful that has a publicly funded program. Pew studies have repeatedly found that secular Americans are far more likely than religious Americans to support stem cell research.

About same-sex marriage, "A recent Pew study found that 79% of secular Americans are supportive, compared to 66% of white mainline Protestants, 61% of Catholics, 44% of Black Protestants and 29% of white evangelicals."

"Other studies have found that secular Americans strongly support women’s reproductive rights, women working in the paid labor force, the DACA program, death with dignity and opposition to the death penalty."

Public Opinion on Abortion | Pew Research Center

• White evangelical Protestant - 20% - 77%
• Catholic - 56% - 42%
• While mainline Protestant - 60% - 38%
• Black Protestant - 64% - 35%
• Unaffiliated - 83% - 17%

According to Eastern Illinois University professor Ryan Burge’s data analysis, around 80% of atheists and agnostics and 70% of those who described their religion as “nothing in particular” voted for Biden.

 

[lpetrich]

America’s Post-Christian Future, Part 1 | Adam Lee

Opinion | Trump’s racist appeals powered a White evangelical tsunami - The Washington Post

But much of the Trump 2020 phenomenon can be explained by a far simpler way of looking at the electorate: There are White evangelical Christians — and there is everybody else.

… The Institute’s American Values Survey from September found overwhelming majorities of White evangelical Protestants saying that police killings of African Americans were “isolated incidents,” and that Confederate flags and monuments are symbols of Southern pride rather than racism.

… Majorities of White evangelical Protestants don’t see the pandemic as a critical issue (they’re less likely than others to wear masks), believe society has become too “soft and feminine,” oppose same-sex marriage, think Trump was called by God to lead and don’t believe he encouraged white supremacist groups.

… Americans are deeply, and for the moment immutably, divided by whether or not they’re nostalgic for what had long been a White-dominated country.

Ryan Burge on Twitter: "Here's a look at the God Gap, which is not really Democrat vs. Republican. It's Republican vs. the rest of society.

In 2019, 54.4% of Republicans said that religion was very important in their life.

It was 30.9% of Independents.
It was 27.7% of Democrats. https://t.co/uhR9iaibXg" / Twitter
Back in 2018, it was R 59%, I 39%, D 38%

 

[lpetrich]

However, these Religious Right Republican Fundies are more zealous about voting than the rest of the population, and many of them were especially motivated to vote by adoration of Donald Trump.

White evangelicals are only 15 percent of the population, but their share of the electorate was 28 percent, according to Edison Research exit polling, and 23 percent, according to the Associated Press version. Though exit polls are imprecise, it seems clear that White evangelicals maintained the roughly 26 percent proportion of the electorate they’ve occupied since 2008, even though their proportion of the population has steadily shrunk from 21 percent in 2008.

…Because they maintained their roughly 80 percent support for Republicans (76 percent and 81 percent in the two exit polls) of recent years, it also means some 40 percent of Trump voters came from a group that is only 15 percent of America.

Author Adam Lee:

If there’s anything Republican leaders are good at, it’s making fear and threat the basis of their worldview. Every election, they scream that their very way of life is in danger, that the other side is pure evil coming to destroy all they hold dear, and that progressive victory means dictatorship and gulags and reeducation camps and armed mobs roaming the streets (because those things are only OK when Republicans do them, obviously).

Because evangelicals are gullible, they swallow these wild lies and race to the polls because they’re convinced that they’re defending the barricades of civilization. It’s no wonder they show up in huge numbers. Even at that, they wouldn’t be such a political juggernaut except that they get a boost from America’s undemocratic institutions – a gerrymandered House that dilutes the influence of liberal cities, and a Senate that privileges small, thinly populated rural states.

Atheists are the Most Politically Active Group in the United States – Religion in Public
There are three tiers:

• Most active: atheists, agnostics, Buddhists, and Jews
• Intermediate: White Catholics, white evangelicals, mainliners, and Mormons
• Least active: "Nothing in Particular" comparable to nonwhites: Black Protestants, nonwhite Catholics, and nonwhite evangelicals

I note that many Buddhists and Jews may be "spiritual but not religious" people, agnostics, and atheists.

 

[lpetrich]

Ryan Burge has lots of interesting stuff in his blog, like Are Politically Conservative Atheists Different from Politically Conservative Evangelicals? – Religion in Public

Ryan Burge on Twitter: "Okay, this is super interesting.

Politically conservative atheists/agnostics are just as racially resentful as evangelicals or Catholics.

But, atheists and agnostics who are moderates or liberals have *much* lower levels of resent than Catholics or evangelicals. https://t.co/vPNjkHhHTo" / Twitter
Those who are "conservative" and "very conservative" have racial-resentment scores of 2.8 - 3.2 across all creeds

Those who are "moderate" have some variation: 1.3 - 1.5 for atheists and agnostics, and 1.7 - 1.8 for Catholics, evangelicals, mainliners, and those who are "nothing in particular".

Those who are "liberal" have more variation: 0.4 for the two A's, 0.7 for ML's and NiP's, and 0.9 for C's and E's.

Those who are "very liberal" have a similar amount of variation: 0.1 - 0.2 for the two A's, 0.4 - 0.5 for ML's and NiP's, and 0.8 for C's and E's.

It's interesting to see how racial resentment declines with ideology, and how the two A's decline the most, with ML's and NiP's being in between, and C's and E's decline the least, even though their decline is also very sizable.

 

[lpetrich]

 Racial resentment scale

1. Irish, Italians, Jewish and many other minorities overcame prejudice and worked their way up. Blacks should do the same without any special favors.
2. Generations of slavery and discrimination have created conditions that make it difficult for blacks to work their way out of the lower class.
3. Over the past few years, blacks have gotten less than they deserve.
4. It's really a matter of some people not trying hard enough, if blacks would only try harder they could be just as well off as whites.

In the US, surveys have found that typically, Republicans score higher on the scale than Democrats. Additionally, in the 2016 United States presidential election, supporters of then-candidate Donald Trump had higher racial resentment scores than supporters of other Republican candidates. The racial resentment scale has been criticized for not separating racism from ideas like conservatism or individualism. Some political scientists have attributed Republicans' higher resentment scores to the fact that they typically favor less government intervention; they are more averse to government assistance to the poor, regardless of race. Believers in the Just-world hypothesis, who therefore believe that one's fate is morally fair and a direct result of one's own actions, also score higher on the racial resentment scale.

Several studies have found that racial resentment scores are lower among younger Americans.

 

[lpetrich]

Are Politically Conservative Atheists Different from Politically Conservative Evangelicals? – Religion in Public

White ones: very liberal, liberal, moderate, conservative, very conservative

• Evan - 3.0% - 6.7% - 21.6% - 35.0% - 33.7%
• Cath - 6.8% - 14.6% - 31.6% - 31.4% - 15.5%
• Mnln - 8.5% - 16.2% - 29.2% - 29.0% - 17.1%
• NtiP - 14.1% - 20.6% - 36.9% - 20.1% - 8.2%
• Agno - 28.6% - 29.8% - 26.6% - 11.8% - 3.2%
• Athe - 40.8% - 30.7% - 20.5% - 5.5% - 2.5%

Not many conservative atheists in the U.S. of A. Likely more in Europe, the British Commonwealth Anglo Three, and Japan and South Korea.

Support for abortion on demand goes down from liberal to conservative, as one might expect.

Very liberal atheists support it at 98.5% and evangelicals support it at 79.1% with the others in between.

Support goes down in tiers, in order of speed of decline: atheist, (agnostic, NiP), (Catholic, mainline), and evangelical.

Very conservative atheists support it at 54.8% then NiP 28.9% Agn 27.2%, then Cath 20.7% Mnln 16.2%, and evangelicals at about 5%.

-

Turning to immigration policy, we have eliminating the visa lottery and chain migration. The latter is people bringing over family members.

We see the same tiered structure as before, but with the most difference among very liberal ones. Atheists at 3.5%, then Agn 7.9% NiP 9.4%, then Cath 13.7% Mnln 11.8%, then Evangelicals at 27.4%. Going from liberal to conservative, we find at very conservative not much difference at about 80%, with atheists being a little bit less.

For voting for Donald Trump, it is evangelical, Catholic, mainline and NiP, agnostic, atheist

I don’t want to make too much about a group that is such a small portion of the population, but conservative atheists and agnostics are a fascinating subset of the population. Remember that these groups together make up about 11.5% of the population in 2018, which is up from 6% in 2008. That kind of growth will lead to more politically diverse coalitions very soon.