For some, the latest poll from respected Pew will be the dreaded day they felt would never come, when you-know-where froze over. For the bulk of Americans, it won’t be a big deal. But inside the Republican Party, candidates will likely ramp up their attempts to win over those resentful and fearful of the new demographics who want their country (or, rather, their country’s old demographics) back.
White Christians now make up less than half of the U.S. population, largely receding from the majorities of most demographic groups, with one notable exception: the Republican Party.
According to the latest results from Pew Research Center’s Religious Landscape survey published Monday by National Journal’s Next America project, just 46 percent of American adults are white Christians, down from 55 percent in 2007.
That’s a major shift and by all indications that gap will continue to increase.
At the same time, according to the report, the share of white Christians identifying as Republican has remained steady, even equal with the share of the party that carried President Ronald Reagan to his 1984 reelection. Nearly seven in 10 white Christians — 69 percent — identify with or lean toward the GOP, while just 31 percent do the same with Democrats.
Among nonwhite Christians, meanwhile, 32 percent identify with or lean toward Democrats, and just 13 percent do the same with Republicans.
And some of those upset with this poll will likely feel the devil is literally in the details:
In less than a decade, the gap in Christian identification between Democrats and Republicans has increased by 50 percent. According to the data presented, in 2007, 88 percent of white Republicans and 70 percent of white Democrats identified as Christian, an 18-point disparity. By 2014, 84 percent of white Republicans identified as Christian, but the share of white Democrats identifying as Christian fell by 13 points, to 57 percent, a 27-point gap.
The demographic polarization of America.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.