I will have to ponder his thesis for some time, but Ryan Burge looks through the numbers on religious affiliation, and religious dedication among Republicans. Though he finds a pretty substantial decline in the percentage of Protestants in the GOP coalition, there isn’t a real burgeoning rise of the “nones.” And while there are differences between religious and nonreligious conservatives on the matter of abortion, we may already be at the limit of how much political change that implies.
How much has the composition of young Republicans changed over the last fifteen years, though? I calculated the composition of 18-35 year old Republicans when Obama won the White House in 2008 and then did the same calculation using data from 2022. The changes aren’t really that large.
For instance, the Protestant share of young Republicans declined just three percentage points during this time period and there was a similar decline for the Catholic percentage, too. About 68% of young Republicans were Protestants or Catholics in 2008. It was 62% in the 2022 data. So, not some dramatic slide away from these two faith traditions.
The nones have risen, too, but certainly not in a numerically large way. In fact, there has been no statistically significant increase in the number of young adult Republicans who say that they are atheist or agnostic (7% to 8%). There has been a much more noticeable uptick in the ‘nothing in particular’ category, though – rising from 12% to 21%. But, again, this isn’t some tremendous shift away from religion among young Republicans. It’s there, but not in significant numbers to actually lead to major changes in the GOP platform.
It’s worth reading the whole thing.