Since I’m always standing at the intersection of politics and religion, I’m always interested in fresh data on the subject, and wrote some up at New York:
One of the big predictions in American politics lately, of infinite comfort to embattled progressives, is that the increasing number of religiously non-affiliated Americans, particularly among younger generations, will spur a steady leftward drift. Perhaps that will mean, we are told, that Democrats will be able to build their elusive permanent majority on the grounds of abandoned houses of worship. Or perhaps, some hope, the religious roots of today’s Republican extremism will begin to wither away, allowing American conservatives to resemble their less intemperate distant cousins in other advanced democracies, ending the culture wars.
Both propositions may be true. But it’s a mistake to treat so-called nones as an undifferentiated secularist mass, as Eastern Illinois University political scientist Ryan Burge explains with some fresh data. He notes that “in 2022, 6% of folks were atheists, 6% were agnostics, and another 23% were nothing in particular.” This large bloc of “nothing in particular” voters may lean left, all other things being equal, but they tend to be as uninterested in politics as in religion, making them a less than ideal party constituency. He explains:
“To put this in context, in 2020 there were nearly as many nothing in particulars who said that they voted for Trump as there were atheists who said that they voted for Biden.
“While atheists are the most politically active group in the United States in terms of things like donating money and working for a campaign, the nothing in particulars are on another planet entirely.
“They were half as likely to donate money to a candidate compared to atheists. They were half as likely to put up a political sign. They were less than half as likely to contact a public official.
“This all points to the same conclusion: they don’t vote in high numbers. So, while there may be a whole bunch of nothing in particulars, that may not translate to electoral victories.”
As Burge mentioned, however, there is a “none” constituency that leans much more strongly left and is very engaged politically — indeed, significantly more engaged than the white evangelicals we’re always hearing about. That would be atheists. In a separate piece, he gets into the numbers:
“The group that is most likely to contact a public official? Atheists.
“The group that puts up political signs at the highest rates? Atheists.
“HALF of atheists report giving to a candidate or campaign in the 2020 presidential election cycle.
“The average atheist is about 65% more politically engaged than the average American.”
And as Thomas Edsall points out in a broader New York Times column on demographic voting patterns, atheists really are a solid Democratic constituency, supporting Biden over Trump in 2020 by an incredible 87 to 9 percent margin. It’s worth noting that the less adamant siblings of the emphatically godless, agnostics, also went for Biden by an 80 to 17 percent margin and are more engaged than “nothing in particulars” as well.
So should Democrats target and identify with atheists? It’s risky. Despite the trends, there are still three times as many white evangelicals as atheists in the voting population. And there are a lot more religious folk of different varieties, some of whom have robust Democratic voting minorities or even majorities who probably wouldn’t be too happy with their party showing disdain for religion entirely. There’s also a hunt-where-the-ducks-fly factor: If atheists and agnostics already participate in politics and lean strongly toward Democrats, how much attention do they really need? There’s a reason that politicians, whatever their actual religious beliefs or practices, overwhelmingly report some religious identity. Congress lost its one professed atheist when California representative Pete Stark lost a Democratic primary in 2012; the only professed agnostic in Congress is Arizona Senator Kyrsten Sinema, whose political future isn’t looking great.
It’s a complicated picture. Conservative columnist Ross Douthat argues that American liberalism’s increasing identification with secularism is keeping a lot of conservative Christians from politically expressing their reservations about Donald Trump. And religious people beyond the ranks of conservative faith communities may feel cross-pressured if Democratic politicians begin to reflect the liberal intelligentsia’s general assumption that religion is little more than a reactionary habit rooted in superstition and doomed to eventual extinction.
Perhaps it makes more sense for Democratic atheists and agnostics to spend time educating and mobilizing the “nothing in particular” Americans who already outnumber white evangelicals and ought to be concerned about how they’ll be treated if a Christian-nationalist Gilead arises. Only then can “nones” become the salvation for the Democratic Party.
Let me add, for a bit of fun but also to point to something quite serious and relevant here.
Richard Hofstadter in “Anti-intellectualism in American Life” details the contrast in American mythology between the “intellectual” and the “practical man”. This is a very old dichotomy but it deeply marks the American psyche still.
A particularly illuminating example can be found in the Walt Disney version of Washington Irving’s Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Note the contrasting physicality of the two males, the easy fright to which Ichabod is susceptible, and the bookishness of Ichabod contrasted with the practical resourcefulness of Brom. Ichabod is, of course, chased out of town (presumably, he goes back east)and Brom gets the girl. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDrnPqQtpxw&feature=PlayList&p=5C1DB69D66041476&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=5
James
Thanks kindly for the response.
“Wooden”, yes. But calmly self-certain and fatherly (if stern) might be another way to understand Cheney’s presentation today. Few on the right presently can pull that off with credibility. Certainly not Jindal, nor Cantor, nor Limbaugh, nor even McCain. Gingrich probably gets closest but then he speaks and things kind of go to hell.
We know this framing, of course, as the right has beat citizens over the head with it for decades. See Kristol’s blog today where he contrasts Obama as “a young Senator” to Cheney as “a grown up”, “a statesman”, “a chief executive”. Fatherly protector versus flighty, immature, feminine liberals. And today, as always, this comes packaged with the projection of dire, deadly threats in waiting. As Drew Westen and others have advised, this “activates peoples’ fear of mortality which inherently pushes them to the right.”
We assumed we were done with this amoral, authoritarian character but whatever combination of personal pathologies and need to dominate others whirl about within him, it seems that the unique circumstances of the present time are going to keep him in our lives. But he’s not a stupid man and he knows how to play this game. We ought not to submisunderestimate him, I think.
Now that the preliminary media coverage is in, I unfortunatly suspect that you are right in thinking that Cheney succeeded in providing the Republicans with a far better spokesman than Limbaugh. His delivery was wooden but he staked out a “strong on defense” position that is significantly more popular than are the Republicans as a party.
Gentlemen
My take here is not so unambiguously positive.
It seems to me that Cheney’s ascension into the spotlight is achieving a strategic positive for the Republicans at this point. My impression is that the ‘face’ of the party has changed significantly (and purposefully) over the last couple of months. I don’t think we’ll see Limbaugh challenging Obama to a debate again (or otherwise attempting to lift his profile past the red meat/radio sphere) and I suspect that is because the smarter people in the party hierarchy have grasped that the leadership vacuum that pushed Limbaugh forward could not continue without devastating consequences for the party’s future electoral chances. I don’t have figures on the frequency of media appearances by Fleischer, Perino, Rove and others from the Bush administration but my impression is that this frequency increased at the time Carville and Begala were working to elevate Limbaugh’s status.
Or, to say this with brevity, I think the party biggies understood that the only Republicans on the horizon with the media manipulation skills and institutional connections to facilitate such manipulation is the Bush administration crowd. And that Cheney is one of the few people who might be able to pull off the “leader” role presently.
In asian martial arts, where there are specific techniques taught for dealing with multiple opponents, one fundamental set of instructions is a series of pivots and twists to insure that one never faces more then a single opponent at at time.
The rule is “never battle ten opponents at once – battle opponents one by one ten times.
Yesterday, Obama faced ten opponents. Today he faced one. fine footwork indeed.