Most Republicans are understandably elated by the 2024 election results: the GOP will soon control the White House and both chambers of Congress. Exit polls, which showed comparatively strong Republican performance among minority voters, render increasingly implausible the notion that demographic change alone will usher in a permanent Democratic majority. This decline in racial and ethnic polarization, at least in voting choices, should be celebrated. Race and ethnicity are not the only demographic characteristics worth tracking, however, and the election results also revealed intriguing trends among religious voters.
First, some caution about exit polls. They have been inaccurate before, such as in the 2004 presidential election, when they almost certainly overestimated George W. Bush’s support among Latinos. Based on the size of the Republican victory in states like Texas and Florida in 2024, we can be confident that the GOP made important gains among Latino voters, but we cannot yet be certain about specific percentages. We should be skeptical of results showing large changes among groups across elections, especially when we’re looking at comparatively small groups in the electorate. That said, exit polls can give us a sense of the direction that these voters’ behavior is shifting.
Of the religious groups for which data are currently available, the most startling change occurred among Catholics. The share of Catholics casting their ballots for Donald Trump surged from 47 percent in 2020 to 58 percent in 2024, according to exit polls. One potential explanation for this development is that some Catholic voters continue to prefer candidates who share their religious identity: Joe Biden is Catholic, while Kamala Harris is a Protestant. The only Catholic on either ticket in 2024 was J. D. Vance, who converted as an adult. Perhaps Biden’s comparatively strong performance among Catholics in 2020 was driven by their identification with his faith.
That’s a plausible but unlikely explanation. Previous election returns suggested that, because Catholics have so thoroughly assimilated into American life, they are no longer especially tribal in their voting patterns, and no longer consider “descriptive representation” to be important. It’s not 1960 anymore, when Catholics voted overwhelmingly for their co-religionist, John F. Kennedy. John Kerry’s Catholic identity did not seem to make a difference in 2004. Biden outperformed Hillary Clinton among Catholics, but not dramatically so.
Another possibility is that the Catholic shift is connected to changing Latino voting patterns. Election returns from a decade ago suggested a significant religious divide in Latino vote choice, with Protestant Latinos, especially evangelicals, being considerably more conservative than Catholic Latinos. If this is no longer the case, and Catholicism is no longer associated with high Democratic support among Latinos, then Republicans likely will continue to perform well among Catholic voters overall in future elections, regardless of candidates’ religious identities.
While the currently available exit poll data do not break down Latinos’ voting patterns by religion, they do show us religious voting patterns among non-Hispanic whites. This group’s support for Trump rose from 56 percent in 2020 to 61 percent in 2024. Since this increase is smaller than that among Catholics overall, we can deduce that the rightward shift was even larger among nonwhite than white Catholics.
Despite claims that the Left has become too friendly with anti-Semites, exit polls show little voting change among Jewish voters. In 2024, an NBC News exit poll indicated that 22 percent of Jewish voters backed Trump, compared with 24 percent who did so in 2016, according to a New York Times exit poll (in 2020, there were too few Jewish respondents to make reliable estimates).
Protestant voters have seen similarly little movement in recent elections, according to exit polls, though they’ve generally broken for Trump—he won 59 percent, 60 percent, and 63 percent of their vote in 2016, 2020, and 2024, respectively. These kinds of polls do not break down by voters’ denomination, however; even the “mainline” and “evangelical” distinction can mask many important differences.
The Cooperative Election Study, conducted by Harvard University, solves this problem. The study not only provides every respondent’s specific denominational affiliation but also offers tens of thousands of observations in every survey, allowing us to estimate trends in these denominations over time. While the 2024 CES will not be available for several months, we can look to the 2022 survey and to older ones for trends.
In the table below, I looked at levels of Republican identification across denominations in 2022 and 2012:
A few points stand out. The so-called mainline Protestant denominations, often stereotyped as more “liberal,” typically contain a lot of Republicans. The Presbyterian Church (USA) and the United Methodist Church, both considered mainline Protestant, are now majority Republican. In the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (considered mainline, despite the name), Republicans outnumber Democrats and are a near majority. This helps explain some of these denominations’ challenges, as their clergy tend to be much more progressive than their average parishioners.
The most fascinating result may be the remarkable swing in the Assemblies of God, which the CES suggests is now the most Republican large Christian denomination in America. Assemblies of God is rooted in the Pentecostal tradition; when I expanded the analysis to include all Pentecostal churches, I found a similar shift—almost 12 percentage points toward Republicans over this ten-year period.
This mirrors larger movements in the electorate, as Pentecostals share many of the demographic and cultural traits of the larger group of working-class voters joining the Republican Party. Though all churches are different, Pentecostalism generally emphasizes religious experience, rather than reason, and embraces ecstatic forms of worship. Theologically, Pentecostals differ from most other contemporary Christians in their insistence that the miracles described in the Book of Acts can still be regularly performed by believers. They believe that “baptism with the Holy Spirit” leads to miraculous signs, such as the ability to “speak in tongues,” to prophesy, and to heal the sick. Their approach to theology and worship can be controversial, even among other conservative evangelicals; Jerry Falwell, for instance, was famously dismissive of Pentecostalism.
Pentecostals are also significantly more racially and ethnically diverse than most other Christian denominations. One 2017 study indicated that only about 50 percent of Pentecostals were non-Hispanic white. They are also much more economically and socially disadvantaged than most other religious groups, with educational attainment and income levels well below the national average.
We see a similarly dramatic political shift among members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS), also known as Mormons, but in the opposite direction. In 2012, Mormons were the most Republican of America’s large religious groups in America, an enthusiasm partly explained by Mitt Romney’s presence on that year’s ballot. That’s not the entire story, however. Many Mormons seem genuinely disgusted by Trump and the MAGA movement.
Given American Mormons’ geographic concentration in Utah, we can see this reflected in the state’s voting patterns. Some 62 percent of Utah’s voters supported John McCain in 2008, and almost 73 percent supported Romney in 2012. In 2016, however, support in Utah for the Republican presidential candidate tanked to about 45 percent. Utah voters gave Trump about 59 percent of the vote in the 2024 election, a significant improvement from his first campaign but still below the Republican share of that state in 2008, a year when the GOP, nationwide, performed especially poorly.
One potential explanation for the diverging results between Mormons and Pentecostals is their differing demographic profiles. Mormons are much whiter than the nation overall and are more affluent and more likely to have completed a college degree than the typical American. As with most groups in the U.S., Mormons’ fertility rate is declining, but they continue to marry earlier and have larger families than most other groups. In other words, Mormons collectively look like stereotypical Republicans from a generation ago. The GOP’s declining fortunes among Mormons, and apparent growing strength among Pentecostals, reflects the party’s changing demographic profile.
This table also raises questions, however. Given that these data indicate that Republican identification has either held steady or substantially increased among most religious groups over the last decade, why weren’t the GOP’s margins higher in 2024?
One explanation: Republicans continue to struggle among the non-religious. Though the GOP may have made some marginal inroads among the religious “nones,” the party still lags well behind Democrats. This is a problem for Republicans, since the percentage of the population with no religion has grown substantially. While the rate of religious disaffiliation among young people may be declining, the percentage of the country that identifies as Christian will almost certainly continue to shrink as the Baby Boom generation passes from the scene. In the absence of a major religious revival, Republicans will need to make improvements among non-religious Americans to maintain their long-term ability to win electoral majorities.
In the immediate future, the G.O.P. can more than make up for its weak performance among non-religious Americans by continuing to run up big margins among Christians. If the goal is functional, less divisive politics, however, this would not be ideal. While it’s unrealistic to expect all religions to split evenly between Republicans and Democrats, it would be preferable if people from all faith traditions, including the non-religious, were important constituencies in both parties. Declining racial polarization is welcome news, but we should also want to avoid religious identity politics.
Photo: byronwmoore / iStock / Getty Images Plus