2020 Presidential Results by Religion

[Associate Justice PiT]

     I highly recommend anyone who is interested in statistics concerning American religion to follow Ryan Burge, because he regularly tweets out lots of interesting charts and graphs. This one recently caught my eye and I decided it was worth sharing with Atlas:

https://twitter.com/ryanburge/status/1692176047666794898

     There are some things I have noticed from it that intrigued me, but I am curious what other people can glean from the data.

[Associate Justice PiT]

What actually is an “evangelical Christian”?

     Good question, I am not sure how the CES categorizes religion. It does seem to be in line with other survey results of how white Evangelicals vote though.

Muslims being way more D than Hindus as late as 2020 is surprising to me.

     It makes sense to me because the consequences of Bush-era attitudes towards Muslims don't just go away quickly. Along the same lines, I think a nontrivial factor in Trump winning Orthodox Christians by landslide margins is Middle Eastern Christians resonating with GOP suspicion of Islam.

[Associate Justice PiT]

I think a nontrivial factor in Trump winning Orthodox Christians by landslide margins is Middle Eastern Christians resonating with GOP suspicion of Islam.

The Orthodox number was curious to me, because when I think of Orthodox Americans I think of Greeks, who might vote Republican on aggregate but certainly don't seem like an overwhelmingly Republican demographic (most of the Greek politicians who come to mind are Democrats). Your explanation makes sense in this regard.

     Greeks are the largest ethnic bloc of Orthodox Christians in the United States, but their share is overall dwindling as they secularize and integrate. While anecdotal, I know a lot of Greek-American conservatives are angry at the Biden Administration for what they see as interfering with Church affairs. With more liberal Greeks increasingly going secular, I suspect they are mainly the ones staying in the pews.

Probably the worst Mormon total for the Republicans in 40+ years.

     I suspect Mormons eventually end up where the Mainlines are. Their culture puts too much emphasis on being friendly and agreeable to really cohere well with the attitude of the Trump GOP. Their leadership also seems to be trending liberal from what I've heard as an outsider.

[Associate Justice PiT]

Can't blame him for lack of subdivision of the Jewish vote given that we're only 2% of the population all lumped together, but it would be really interesting to see the secular/Reform/Conservative/Orthodox breakdown. I'd guess around 75% D secular, 70% D Reform, 60% D Conservative, and 30% D Orthodox (probably breaking down into around 50% D for Modern Orthodox and 20% D for Haredi). Sephardic Judaism mostly exists outside of that structure, and if you also separate out Jews who identify as Sephardic I'd guess around 55% D.

     A tweet in response to Ryan Burge actually talked about the breakdown among Jewish denominations:

https://twitter.com/rushinfive/status/1692555725766013120

     I don't know how well "no particular branch" tracks with secular Jews, but the split between Reform and Conservative on the one hand and Orthodox on the other is a bit wider than you had guessed. Overall pretty close though. I doubt I could be that accurate guessing voting splits among Orthodox Christian jurisdictions.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     Silly me, I just noticed that "Jews of no religion" is its own line, at 77-19 D. Pretty wild though that they are slightly less Dem than Reform Jews. The difference is small enough though that it could just be statistical noise.