Pew Research: White Christians No Longer A Majority

Politico reports:

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.

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.

More from the National Journal:

Even as White Chris­ti­ans shrink in their over­all num­bers, they still ac­count for nearly sev­en-in-10 Amer­ic­ans who identi­fy with, or lean to­ward, the Re­pub­lic­an Party, the Pew study found. White Chris­ti­ans, in fact, rep­res­ent as large a share of the Re­pub­lic­an co­ali­tion today as they did of Amer­ic­an so­ci­ety over­all in 1984, when Ron­ald Re­agan won reelec­tion. A clear ma­jor­ity of all White Chris­ti­ans across the United States now identi­fy as Re­pub­lic­an, Pew found.

In sharp con­trast, the Pew data show, the Demo­crat­ic co­ali­tion has evolved in­to a three-legged stool that di­vides al­most evenly between White Chris­ti­ans, non-White Chris­ti­ans, and those from all races who identi­fy either with a non-Chris­ti­an faith or, in­creas­ingly, with no re­li­gious tra­di­tion at all. Most Amer­ic­ans who don’t identi­fy with any re­li­gious faith – a rap­idly grow­ing group—now align with Demo­crats.