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. Story Continued Below
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. 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. Pew conducted the massive survey by telephone between June 4 and Sept. 30, 2014, interviewing 35,071 Americans, with an overall margin of error of plus or minus 0.6 percentage points.
Read more: www.politico.com/story/2015/11/poll-white-christians- population-216154#ixzz3sMgGBOwm