According to Gallup, John McCain trails Barack Obama by 25 points among voters for whom religion is not "an important part of [their] daily life". McCain leads by 5 points among those who answer that question in the affirmative.
These sorts of numbers are generally described as a problem for the Democratic candidate. However, as Ruy Teixeira pointed out four years ago, if you had to pick a sign of this divide to be on, it might be on the side of the secular. That is because by almost all indicators, religious participation in the United States is decreasing. According to a Pew poll, 45 percent of Americans now completely agree with the statement that "prayer is an important part of my daily life", down from a peak of 55 percent in 1999. (There does appear to have a bit of a "God Bounce"/mini-revival in the mid-late 1990s -- not so much in the number of religious Americans, but in the activity and enthusiasm of those that do practice).
Moreover, the younger generation is less religious than the older generation. 19 percent of those born after 1977 say they are atheist or agnostic, as compared with 11 percent of Boomers (born 1946-1964), and 5 perecnt of pre-Boomers (born before 1946).
Barack Obama, of course, does need to at least hold his own among actively religious voters, who constitute 65 percent of the electorate according to Gallup. He is able to do so thanks to substantial support from African-American and Latino voters, while trailing McCain by 25 points among actively religious, non-Hispanic whites. Nevertheless, if these generational trends hold, then each year a coalition based on actively religious voters will become marginally less successful.
Saturday, June 14, 2008
McCain's Atheist Problem?
-- Nate Silver at 11:56 AM
Labels: demographics, religion
64 comments
Hi, this is unrelated, but I had a question about Obama's win percentage and wasn't sure where else to put it. The three states that are really close according to your averages are Ohio, Michigan, and Nevada, where each candidate has a 50% chance of winning. Whichever candidate takes two of these states wins the election if every other state goes to the person most likely to win it. That being said, how can Obama have a 54.8 win percentage? Shouldn't it be exactly 50%?
Nate, you just made my whole day with this headline. Thank you.
Anonymous--
You're making the false assumption that the candidate that is ahead in the state will win that state 100% of the time. That's not the case. If Obama's running better in the states McCain is ahead in than McCain runs in the states Obama is ahead in, the probabilities still favor Obama.
Curiously, how would this be any different from previous elections...I know this is a stereotype but wouldn't atheists tend to support liberal ideology instead of conservative ideology? It is an interesting stat but I don't think it is that important.
I have to disagree on the headline (as much as I like the sentiment). A person who answers "no" to the question "Is religion an important part of your daily life?" is not necessarily an atheist. I assume you know this and you're just being snarky. But for us athiests out here, we'd rather not have our views conflated with the masses who have a god-belief but still answer "no" to the above question.
Eh. I suppose I just sound like a cranky atheist. I don't mean it that way, but I do think that your title distracts from the interesting findings of the poll.
An unrelated question:
Will you continue with the Burrito Bracket?
I actually never ate a Burrito, but since I read the blog, I´m thinking about where to get a Burrito in Hamburg, Germany.
"atheists tend to support liberal ideology instead of conservative ideology?"
This is purely anecdotal, but most atheists I know lean libertarian rather than liberal. They're small government, anti-tax, and socially libertarian. That tends to mean that they're independent voters that can be courted by either major party successfully.
Quick typo check - "Atheist Problem" not "Athiest Problem" - though for one macabre second I read "McCain's Achiest Problem" and wondered which of his limbs was hurting him the most...
seems like there's a problem comparing the percentage of non-religious young people with the percentage of non-religious boomers. you'd want to compare to the number of boomers who were non-religious at that age. I'd suspect that people are somewhat likely to leave religion when young and return to it later.
Isn't this actually a marked improvement vs. Bush for McCain?
Alex-
I'm a 2nd generation atheist, and I don't really mind so much being "lumped in" with the merely less religious. In the spectrum from atheist to agnostic to "spiritual", we're all essentially unaccepting of an orthodoxy or dogma of religious views - and that underlying attitude probably better captures a pattern of group/block voting than parsing out into the specific subgroups.
I've also noticed there's no real political pattern to other atheists I meet. Usually they vote they way they do not for the standard reasons.
Actually, as a conservative atheist, I don't know many people like me.
Actually, as an atheist, I don't know many people like me. Hearing that nearly 20% of my age group identifies as atheist/agnostic is far outside any number I've seen scientifically quoted, or personally experienced.
I'm not entirely sure that one can assume that since the younger generation is less religious, soon a larger portion of the overall population will be less religious. There's at least a lot of anecdotal evidence that people get more religious as they get older - are there any reliable figures on this?
The interesting aspect (to me, at least) of this is that religion is more clearly an important part of Obama's life than it is for McCain. Senator Clinton is even more actively involved in daily religious activities, but I dare say that she is even more unpopular with "religious" voters.
This is not really surprising, though. Religious voters preferred Reagan, perhaps the least religious modern President to Jimmy Carter, the most religious.
Gallup found that, based on its May tracking polls, the small block of Americans who are atheists with no religion at all back Obama 67% to McCain's 27% (a 40-point margin).
Apparently, atheists recognize one of their own after Barack's private remark to San Francisco millionaires that people cling to religion out of bitterness about their life situation. If he is an atheist at heart, it would explain why Barack was never concerned about Trinity's twisted theology, since atheists consider all religion a scam.
Gallup found that, based on its May tracking polls, the small block of Americans who are atheists with no religion at all back Obama 67% to McCain's 27% (a 40-point margin).
Apparently, atheists recognize one of their own after Barack's private remark to San Francisco millionaires that people cling to religion out of bitterness about their life situation. If he is an atheist at heart, it would explain why Barack was never concerned about Trinity's twisted theology, since atheists consider all religion a scam.
I think it'd be interesting to see how nonreligious voters have voted in elections in the past. While the change among nonreligious voters is probably slower to take effect, it could easily be that the net result with nonreligious voters turned off by Republicans makes up for the religious voters drawn to them through increasing entanglement with religion.
The 25 point margin among nonreligious individuals will more than make up for 5 point margin among religious ones.
I definitely support the overall point though - while reporters obsess over small margins among working class or uneducated voters, you never see any mention of a huge 25 point margin among a significant portion of voters. I've never once seen any efforts (or call for efforts) to 'court' nonreligious voters the way you see for every other group.
I thought this comment at Matt Yglesias's blog was interesting: http://matthewyglesias.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/06/barack_obamas_lonely_hearts_cl.php#comment-2346401
Apparently, the marriage gap is an amazingly good predictor of how red versus blue a state is. Do you use something like this in the regression analysis already?
The reason presidential candidates don't court atheists is the same reason that all candidates (no matter how liberal and pro-abortion they are) say they believe in God -- no openly-declared atheist can be elected president. Period.
"This is purely anecdotal, but most atheists I know lean libertarian rather than liberal. They're small government, anti-tax, and socially libertarian. That tends to mean that they're independent voters that can be courted by either major party successfully."
That number that somebody cited about Obama leading by 40 points among actual atheists seems pretty in line with what I'd think. In the Bay Area, which is probably the most atheist metro in the nation, there are very few libertarians. As an atheist, I will tell you that the majority of the atheists I know (and I know a lot of them, being from the east bay) are social democrats. Atheists tend to be far more educated than any other group, and t