White Christians are no longer the majority in America, but they’re still driving election results
While white Christians composed only 43 percent of the population in 2016, they constituted an estimated 55 percent of voters. And although white evangelical Protestants composed only 17 percent of the public in 2016, they were 26 percent of voters. In other words, in the electorate, white Christians overall were 12 percentage points overrepresented, and white evangelical Protestants were nine percentage points overrepresented.
When white Christians stepped into the voting booth in 2016, their electoral power was comparable to their share of the population back in 2008. The Republican time machine took white evangelicals on an even longer journey. They jumped back to the middle of the George W. Bush era, the last time they made up nearly a quarter of the population.
What fuels the Republicans’ political strength, in other words, is not current white Christian population levels, but the fact that white Christians historically turn out to vote at higher rates than nonwhite and non-Christian Americans. [Continue reading…]