Mormons are the most heavily
Republican-leaning religious group in the U.S., while a pair of major
historically black Protestant denominations – the African Methodist
Episcopal (AME) Church and the National Baptist Convention – are two of
the most reliably Democratic groups, according to data from Pew Research
Center’s 2017 Religious Landscape Study.
Seven-in-ten U.S. Mormons identify with
the Republican Party or say they lean toward the GOP, compared with 19%
who identify as or lean Democratic – a difference of 51 percentage
points. That’s the biggest gap in favor of the GOP out of 30 religious
groups we analyzed, which include Protestant denominations, other
religious groups and three categories of people who are religiously
unaffiliated.
At the other end of the spectrum, an
overwhelming majority of members of the AME Church (92%) identify with
or lean toward the Democratic Party, while just 4% say they favor the
Republican Party (an 88-point gap). Similarly, 87% of members of the
National Baptist Convention and 75% of members of the Church of God in
Christ (another historically black denomination) identify as Democrats.
These patterns largely reflect data from exit polls during the 2016 general election.
In that year, 95% of black Protestants said they voted for Democrat Hillary Clinton, while 78% of Mormons said they voted for Republican Donald Trump, who also is a Mormon.
White evangelical Protestants also voted
heavily Republican in 2016 (79% for Romney), which mirrors the leanings
of many of the largest evangelical denominations. Members of the Church
of the Nazarene are overwhelmingly likely to favor the GOP (63%
Republican vs. 24% Democrat), as are the Southern Baptist Convention
(64% vs. 26%) and the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod (59% vs. 27%),
among other evangelical churches. (In our survey, members of these
groups can be of any race or ethnicity, while exit polls report totals
for white evangelicals in particular.)
Catholics are divided politically in our
survey, just as they were in the 2016 election. While 37% say they favor
the GOP, 44% identify with or lean toward the Democratic Party (and 19%
say they do not lean either way). In the 2016 election, 50% of
Catholics said they voted for Hillary, while 48% voted for Trump.
Members of mainline Protestant churches
look similar to Catholics in this regard. For example, 44% of members of
the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) identify as or lean Republican in the
survey, compared with 47% who are Democrats or Democratic-leaning.
United Methodists and Anglicans are slightly more likely than other
mainline groups to say they are Republicans, while members of the United
Church of Christ are more likely to be Democrats.
About seven-in-ten religiously
unaffiliated voters (70%) and Jews (69%) voted for Obama in 2012. A
similar share of Jews in our survey (64%) say they are Democrats, while
all three subsets of religious “nones” (atheists, agnostics and those
who say their religion is “nothing in particular”) lean in that
direction as well.
Jehovah’s Witnesses, who are taught to remain politically neutral
and abstain from voting, stand out for their overwhelming
identification as independents who do not lean toward either party.
Three-quarters of Jehovah’s Witnesses put themselves in that category.
