Have the Democrats Lost the Black Church?
Are there cracks forming in this long standing alliance?
One of the most important components of the Democratic coalition is the Black Church. Joe Biden has appeared at a number of prominent Black Protestant churches over the last several years including a recent visit to Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina. This congregation is one of the most well known Black Churches in the United States and is tragically remembered as the site where Dylan Roof killed nine people after a Bible study in June of 2015.
But, I have to wonder if there are not cracks beginning to form in the alliance between the Democratic party and Black Protestant Christianity. I have written about this a little bit before, but I felt like it needed a second look.
What drove that is a recent piece in Good Authority, a website that is full of content written by political scientists. The title tells the story of the article, “America is less polarized by race – but more polarized about race.” That’s a theme that also showed up in Perry Bacon’s column at the Washington Post back in October, “More people of color are voting Republican. That’s not all bad news.” The same conclusion is bubbling up now - voters of color should not be taken for granted by the Democratic party.
But I wanted to put a religious angle on this. Here’s a hypothesis that was rolling around in my head. Religiously active Black Protestants have never really been that comfortable with where the Democratic party is headed on certain cultural issues (like abortion), and this may actually result in some shifts in voting patterns in the future.
So - I narrowed my sample to just folks who are Black and Protestant and attend religious services at least once week. What you see below is the mean political and ideological position of this group over the last several election cycles.
And, I think it’s pretty apparent from these results that there is movement afoot - especially in the 2020 and the 2022 results. Let’s just get this out of the way - Black Protestants are not liberals. It’s silly to call them liberals. When asked to place themselves in ideological space, the mean score is almost always a 3 on a scale from 1 (very liberal) and 5 (very conservative). The average high attending Black Protestants is the definition of ideologically moderate. I actually wrote a whole chapter about this in 20 Myths about Religion and Politics in America.
But, at the same time, Black Protestants are unmistakably Democrats. Every estimate here is left of center on the partisanship spectrum. The scale runs from 1 (strong Democrat) to 7 (strong Republican). In 2008, the mean Black Protestant was at 2.06. In 2012 and 2016, it was right around 1.9. But in the last two cycles it was 2.2 and 2.5, respectively. That’s a nearly 10% shift to the middle between 2012 and 2022. Hm. Church going Black Protestants seem less enamored with the Democratic party.
Let me show you that partisanship distribution in a bit of a different way. Here’s a graph of seven-point party identification using those same years.
Okay, now we are starting to see where the defection is happening - it’s among Strong Democrats. In 2008, 2012, and 2016 about 60% of Black Protestants who attended church weekly identified as Strong Democrats. In 2020, that dipped to 56% and it’s even lower in the most recent data I have - 49% in 2022. It’s notable to me where they have ended up, too. It’s not like they moved one click to the right (into the Not Strong Democrat camp). No, in fact, the biggest jump is the share of this group who identifies as Independents. It was about 8% between 2008 and 2016. In the most recent data it’s more than doubled to 17%.
Now, before you go back to Twitter and declare the end of the Black Protestant + Democrat alliance, you need to take a look at this next graph. It’s actual vote choice in presidential elections since 2008.
Among Black Protestants who attend church every week, the Democrats win almost all their votes. It was 91% and 94% in the two elections with Obama at the top of the ticket. It did dip to 88% and 87% in the last two presidential cycles. So, I wouldn’t say that this shift in declared partisanship is actually yielding a huge difference in the vote choice of Black Protestants. At least not yet.
But I do think it behooves the readers of this Substack to understand that weekly attending Black Protestants are not the median Democrat on a whole bunch of issues. In fact, it’s pretty clear to me that Black Protestants are a whole lot more moderate than the average Democrat when it comes to topics like abortion, immigration, and their views of law enforcement.
Take, for instance, a battery of questions about abortion. The top row of this graph are the “absolute” questions: abortion for any reason, and a complete ban on abortion. On both, the average weekly attending Black Protestant is not nearly as supportive of abortion rights as the average Democrat. Note the graph about supporting abortion for any reason in the top left. Among all Democrats, the share in favor has shifted from 77% in 2014 to 83% in 2022. Among Black Protestants it’s only moved two percentage points (60% to 62%).
When it comes to late term abortions (those after 20 weeks), the median Democrat has moved a lot on this issue. In 2014, nearly 60% were in favor of a ban, in the most recent data it was just slightly more than 30%. Among weekly attending Black Protestants, there’s also been a decline but of a much smaller magnitude - 68% to 52%. Even today, a majority of Black Protestants would favor a ban on abortion after 20 weeks of gestation.
And, look at this battery of questions about immigration topics that were posed to respondents in late 2022.
Among weekly attending Black Protestants, the overall impression you get from these results is that they are not as open to immigration as the average Democrat. On the question of a big increase in funding for border security, 38% of Black Protestants were in favor compared to only 20% of all Democrats. Black Protestants were nearly 20 points more likely to support reducing legal immigration by 50% compared to the average Democrat (44% vs 25%).
Black Protestants who are religiously active are ten points less likely to favor a pathway to legal status for those who entered the country illegally and twenty-two points more likely to favor an increase in border agents. There’s just no other way to say this - weekly attending Black Protestants are more conservative on immigration than the Democratic party as a whole.
And, what about issues regarding policing? In the wake of the murder of George Floyd, there was a push by a lot of liberal activists to “defund the police.” There’s been a significant amount of data that has been published that points to the conclusion that the Black community did not agree with this sentiment - in fact, they wanted a stronger police presence to ensure the safety of their neighborhoods.
That comes through in this data from the Cooperative Election Study, as well.
While 51% of all Democrats wanted to see police funding cut by 10%, that sentiment was only shared by 38% of weekly attending Black Protestants. When asked if they wanted to see 10% more police officers in their community, 56% of Black Protestants were in favor compared to just 38% of all Democrats. It’s pretty apparent that weekly attending Black Protestants are much more moderate on issues related to policing compared to the median Democrat.
Before I’m done, I wanted to give you one more look at this issue from a different angle. The Cooperative Election Study asks respondents to put themselves on an ideological scale from 1 (very liberal) to 7 (very conservative). They also ask folks to put the Democratic and Republican party on that same continuum. Here’s how all Democrats and weekly attending Black Protestants see the political landscape over the last decade.
This brings the divide between these two groups into much sharper focus. The average Black Protestant is in the middle of this scale. They do see themselves as slightly left of center, but it’s 3.8 in 2022. That’s just .2 points from the dead center of the continuum. On the over hand the average Democrat is much further to the left. In 2022, their mean score was 2.7 - more than a full point to the left of Black Protestants. And the average Democrat has moved significantly to the left between 2016 and 2022. That same movement is not there for Black Protestants.
What is fascinating, though, is the fact that these two groups see the Democrats in basically the same spot. The average Democrat and the average weekly attending Black Protestant sees the party at 2.9 in 2022. The difference is that Black Protestants are clearly to the right of the Democrats.
Also notice how Black Protestants don’t perceive the GOP to be that extreme. In 2022, they put them right about 5.5 (with 7 being the most conservative). That’s the exact same ideological position as 2012. Black Protestants just don’t see the GOP drifting in any direction over the prior decade. Among all Democrats, a different portrait emerges - they put the GOP at 5.9 in 2012 and 6.2 in 2022.
Black Protestants just don’t see the political world as polarized as other Democrats do. Which means that the gulf between the average church going Black Protestant and the GOP is just not that large - just 1.6 points. Among the average Democrat, the divide is over twice as large at 3.5 points.
I don’t want to make some big proclamation here about how the Democrats are going to see a mass exodus of religiously active Black voters, but it does seem like this voting bloc is clearly more moderate than the party as a whole. That’s likely always been the case, but in the current environment with the possibility of a real racial realignment happening, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn if Biden does demonstrably worse among this voting bloc than in prior elections.
Which could be problematic in places like Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. All states that he desperately needs to hold the White House for a second term.
Code for this post can be found here.
I wonder what percentage of black Protestants attend traditional black denominations. Surely declining, right?
I've noticed movement even in the past 5-10 years in my local area. I live in an area in the Deep South near the Black Belt, with a correspondingly large and long-established black population, but as expected, the traditional SBC churches that dominate the local landscape have always had very few, if any, blacks in attendance.
Now, not only are the ascendant non-denoms much more racially integrated (to be sure, still more white than the local population), but I visited a PCA church for Maundy Thursday and was surprised to see some black families there as well.
Though one other feature of the local landscape is a newer black independent Baptist church that is effectively an integral part of the local evangelical conversation, unlike the AME churches and so on, and it seems to be growing, also unlike them. I would also be prepared to speculate that its members are less committed to the Democratic Party than at the AME churches.
Seeing these data make me wonder what the distribution of a “how long have you been attending the church you go to” item would look like.
Not to be a crosstab diver but I feel like interacting that by age of subject might have some interesting efx.
(especially given the norm of “do not deviate from the Community (tm)” that is ever present in southern black culture.)
Excellent work as always, Ryan!
PS: was great hearing you pop up on 538! 👏🏻