When voting, ‘nones’ are something
Survey shows the unaffiliated heavily lean toward Dems
When members of the small Pennsylvania chapter of Secular Democrats of America log on for monthly meetings, they’re not there for a virtual happy hour.
“We don’t sit around at our meetings patting ourselves on the back for not believing in God together,” said David Brown, a founder from the Philadelphia suburb of Ardmore.
The group, mostly consisting of atheists and agnostics, mobilizes to knock on doors and make phone calls on behalf of Democratic candidates “who are pro-science, pro-democracy, whether or not they are actually self-identified secular people,” he said. “We are trying to keep church and state separate. That encompasses LGBTQIA+, COVID science, bodily autonomy and reproductive rights.”
Voters with no religious affiliation supported Democratic candidates and abortion rights by staggering percentages in the 2022 midterms. And they’re voting in large numbers. In 2022, some 22% of voters claimed no religious affiliation, according to AP VoteCast, a survey of more than 94,000 voters nationwide.
The unaffiliated — often nicknamed the “nones” — voted for Democratic House candidates nationwide over Republicans by more than a 2-to-1 margin (65% to 31%), according to VoteCast. That echoes the 2020 presidential election, when Democrat Joe Biden took 72% of voters with no religious affiliation, while Republican Donald Trump took 25%, according to VoteCast.
Among all U.S. adults, 29% are nones — those who identify as atheist, agnostic
or “nothing in particular” — according to a 2021 report by the Pew Research Center. That’s up 10 percentage points from a decade earlier, according to Pew. And the younger the adults, the more likely they are to be unaffiliated, according to a 2019 Pew analysis.
“People talk about how engaged white evangelicals are, but you don’t know the half of it,” said Ryan Burge, a professor of political science at Eastern Illinois University who focuses on the interaction of religious and political behavior.
Atheists and agnostics are a subset of nones and are less numerous than evangelicals. But they are more likely than evangelicals to make a campaign donation, attend a political meeting or join a protest, Burge said, citing the Harvard-affiliated Cooperative Election Study.
“When you consider how
involved they are in political activity, you realize how important they are at the ballot box,” he said.
The nones equaled Catholics at 22% of the electorate, though they were barely half the figure for Protestants and other Christians (43%), according to VoteCast. Other religious groups totaled 13%, including 3% Jewish and 1% Muslim.
Separately, 30% of voters identified as born again or evangelical Christians.
In several bellwether races this year, the secular vote made its impact felt, according to AP VoteCast. About four in five people with no religious affiliation voted against abortion restrictions in referendums in Michigan and Kentucky. Between two-thirds and three-quarters of nones supported Democratic candidates in statewide races in Arizona
and Wisconsin.
The secular population is a diverse group, Pew reported in 2021. Two-thirds identify as “nothing in particular” — a group that is alienated from politics as well as religion, Burge said. But atheists and agnostics, though only a third of the nones, punch above their weight, given their heavy involvement in politics.
The trends of a growing secular cohort among Democrats and the increased religiosity of the GOP are not coincidental.
Several prominent Republican candidates and their supporters have promoted Christian nationalism, which fuses an American and Christian sense of identity, mission and symbols.
That prompts a reaction by many secular voters, Burge said: “At least among
white people, it’s become clear the Democratic Party has become the party for the non-religious people.”
Yet it’s not their party alone. The Democratic coalition draws heavily from religious groups — Black Protestants, liberal Jews, Catholics of color. The Black church tradition, in particular, has a highly devout base in support of moderate and progressive policies.
“I think the Democrats have the biggest problem in the world because they have to keep atheists and Black Protestants happy at the same time,” Burge said.
Tensions surfaced in 2019 when the Democratic National Committee passed a resolution praising the religiously unaffiliated in language some saw as overstating their clout and denigrating religious values.
Differences between secular and religious Democrats showed up in VoteCast. Majorities of Democratic voters across all religious affiliations say abortion should be legal at least most of the time, but 6 in 10 Democratic voters unaffiliated with a religion say it should always be legal, compared with about 4 in 10 Democratic voters affiliated with Christian traditions.
But the growing secular constituency doesn’t worry Bishop William Barber, a leader in one of the nation’s top faith-based progressive movements.
“Jesus didn’t worry about it, so why would I?” said Barber, president of Repairers of the Breach, which calls for moral advocacy by faith and other leaders on behalf of the poor, immigrants and other marginalized communities. “Jesus said the one who is not against me is for me.”