2024 Election Post-Mortem: Atheists and Agnostics

From Margins to Mainstream: The Political Ascendancy of Secular Americans

My first book was entitled The Nones: Where They Came From, Who They Are, and Where They Are Going. It was published—what feels like a lifetime ago—in 2021. I’m pretty proud of that little volume because it established my approach to thinking about non-religion in the United States. One of the points I make, which I hope will live on in scholarly discourse, is that the nones are not a homogenous mass of people. There are clear subgroups within this label that need to be understood with much more granularity.

The three categories I used in that book were based on how the Pew Research Center asks about religious belonging. The survey gives people twelve options—the first eight are groups like Protestants, Catholics, LDS, Muslims, etc. Option 9 is atheist, option 10 is agnostic, and option 11 is “nothing in particular.” I have an entire chapter entitled Not All Nones Are Created Equal, where I go into detail about how those three groups differ.

One major bifurcation is between atheists/agnostics and the “nothing in particular” group. In their recent book Secular Surge, Campbell, Layman, and Green call the first two groups “secular” people, while those in the “nothing in particular” category are simply non-religious. Today, I want to describe how these secular people have voted in the last five election cycles. But before I get there, let’s visualize the rise of atheists and agnostics since 2008.

In 2008, just about 8% of the sample identified as atheist or agnostic. I know you’re wondering about what happened in 2010—the CES just left off the atheist option. I don’t really know why, but I did write an entire paper about it. Over time, however, the share of secular people slowly rose. It was clearly above 10% by 2015.

That said, the last couple of years have seen relative stability in the share of the country identifying as atheist or agnostic. It was 12.8% in 2019, but fell below 12% in both 2020 and 2023. The most recent estimate is right at 13%—the highest we’ve seen so far, but not statistically different from the estimates in 2019 and 2022. I think it’s fair to say that these two groups have experienced stagnant growth over the last five or six years.

So then the question is: how do they vote on Election Day?

There’s a whole lot of blue here, right? Both atheists and agnostics are clearly strong supporters of the Democratic Party. That was true when Obama was at the top of the ticket, and it remained the case when Harris ran against Trump in 2024. In a generic election, I’d anticipate that about 80% of atheists would vote for the Democrat (whoever it is), and slightly fewer—maybe 75%—among agnostics.

There’s also a consistent trend for both groups: the Democratic share in 2020 was the highest on record. Only 10% of atheists voted for Trump in 2020, and 17% of agnostics. But in 2024, there was a slight reversal. That year, 83% of atheists voted for Harris, while 14% supported Trump. That result is basically identical to what we saw when Obama was on the ballot in 2008 and 2012. Among agnostics, 76% voted for Harris and 22% for Trump—a modest shift to the right, similar to what we saw among atheists. But again, both groups remain deeply Democratic.

Beyond vote choice, it’s important to understand how vital these groups have become to the Democratic coalition. In other words—any Democrat running for national office needs to take atheists and agnostics seriously, given their growing share of all votes cast.

In 2008, about 13% of all votes for Barack Obama came from atheists and agnostics. For McCain, they made up just 3% of his coalition. Over time, the importance of secular voters has grown considerably. When Hillary Clinton ran in 2016, atheists and agnostics made up 18% of her total votes. That rose to 22% for Biden in 2020. In the most recent election, nearly a quarter of the Democratic coalition consisted of atheists and agnostics. That’s nearly double their share from 2008. In short, a Democratic presidential candidate cannot win without securing 80–85% of this bloc.

What about Republicans? I think it’s fair to say that they can afford to ignore this constituency and suffer few electoral consequences. Between 2008 and 2020, only about 4% of Republican voters were atheists or agnostics. In 2024, that rose slightly to 5.2%, but it’s still a tiny sliver. By comparison, white evangelicals now make up about 40% of Trump voters. The GOP has no incentive to alienate that base to try and attract a small number of secular voters.

I’m also interested in how atheists and agnostics differ from other Democrats on social issues. My assumption has been that they’re more liberal on abortion and gender/sexuality issues, but I wanted to see if the data supports that. So I looked at a battery of Culture War questions and compared atheists and agnostics to the average Democrat.

My overall impression: there isn’t a dramatic difference among the three groups. Among all Democrats, 17% support banning abortion pills by mail. That’s four points higher than agnostics, and nine points higher than atheists. Support is low across the board. There’s also little appetite for banning women from traveling to another state to obtain an abortion. Generally speaking, pro-choice sentiment is orthodoxy on the left.

You do see bigger differences on gender identity. Atheists are about eight points less likely than average Democrats to support a ban on gender transition procedures for minors. In fact, these procedures are slightly more popular among atheists than among Democrats as a whole. And when it comes to allowing teachers to use a student’s preferred pronouns without parental consent, atheists are significantly more liberal.

Overall, it’s fair to say that the secular coalition inside the Democratic Party is more progressive than the median Democrat. It’s not a chasm, but the difference is real. That helps set up the next point. Survey respondents were asked to place themselves, the Democrats, and the Republicans on an ideological scale from “very liberal” to “very conservative.” Here’s what that looks like from 2012 through 2024.

The top graph is the entire sample, which provides a baseline. The average American is just slightly right of center, though the trend has slowly shifted leftward over the last decade. You can also see where people place the two parties ideologically. These provide useful anchor points for interpreting how atheists and agnostics responded.

The average atheist stands out as a clear outlier. Atheists have been trending steadily left for years. In 2014 and 2016, they placed themselves close to the Democratic Party. But more recently, two things happened: atheists moved sharply left, and they perceived Democrats as moving toward the center. Atheists are the only group I’ve seen that views themselves as more liberal than the Democratic Party.

What about agnostics? This graph highlights how they differ. Yes, they’re more liberal than the average American and have also shifted left—particularly between 2017 and 2018. But unlike atheists, they view Democrats as more liberal and believe the party has moderated over time.

One thing is clear: atheists and agnostics view the U.S. political landscape very differently from nearly every other religious group. Here are the 2024 results for those two groups, along with where they rate Kamala Harris, Joe Biden, and Donald Trump.

See the black circles? That’s where each group places itself ideologically. No circle is further left than atheists—and agnostics aren’t far behind. Atheists rate themselves left of Harris, Biden, and the Democratic Party. No other group does that. On the flip side, no group rates itself as more conservative than Trump or the GOP.

What also emerges is that atheists view Biden and the Democrats as fairly moderate, while seeing the GOP and Trump as extremely conservative—more so than any other religious group. Atheists have a sharply polarized view of U.S. politics. The only group that comes close is white evangelicals—just in the opposite direction.

What do I take away from all this? I don’t think we saw dramatic changes among atheists and agnostics in 2024. Harris may have done slightly worse, but the difference is marginal. What’s become clear to me—and should be to Democratic strategists—is that atheists and agnostics are now a crucial part of the electoral coalition. Anyone hoping to win the White House from the GOP in 2028 needs to take them seriously—or risk losing again.

Code for this post can be found here.

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Ryan P. Burge is a professor of practice at the Danforth Center on Religion and Politics at Washington University.