"Simply put, religious people tend to gravitate toward a conservative political ideology and tend to favor the Republican Party on election day." Alternative wording: Religious people tend to choose doctrinally conservative (often ancient) forms of faith -- Christian and Jewish -- and, thus, tend to vote against political leaders who advocate cultural and moral policies that clash with their beliefs (including a traditionally liberal approach to the First Amendment, affecting freedom of speech, freedom of association and freedom of religious practice).
Hi Terry, as you know I am an Orthodox Christian (convert of thirty years), and it doesn't get more traditionalist than Orthodoxy in Christianity. Nevertheless my politics do not skew to the Right: I regard today's MAGA Republicanism as morally toxic, though I have voted for non-MAGA Republicans (e.g., Larry Hogan as governor of Maryland). In 2024 I voted for the American Solidarity Party since I could not in good conscience vote for either major presidential candidate.
Read my comment again. I stressed people voting against candidates that threatened their beliefs. I did say that they automatically vote MAGA or, if they felt forced to vote MAGA, they didn’t yearn for other choices. Remember the 2016 numbers that showed that half of white evangelicals that voted for Trump didn’t WANT to? BTW, I am also a third party voter.
How you square this with Jews being one of the most persistent liberal voting blocks in the US? And Hinduism is as ancient as Judaism, but they're *also* solidly blue here. I don't think people with conservative tendencies are converting to Judaism, and most people don't "choose" their religion--they stick to what they were raised with or leave, but there isn't a lot of swapping.
Well, if you only meant Orthodox, you should have specified :)
It's an odd choice for an "ancient" tradition, though, since Orthodox Judaism is actually one of the *youngest* Jewish sects. It's a revival movement that's only about 200 years old.
I appreciate the thoughtful analysis and your willingness to look for what data is available and study it. I do regret the lack of interest in surveying the majority of young people in that age group who are not college students. I would think there might be substantial differences between college and working class young adults.
You haven't discussed race. I'd imagine non-white Christians (Black Protestants, Hispanic Catholics, some Asians) would look more like the world religions and less like white Christians. In particular, this helps to explain the outlier position of LDS, who are overwheling white.
In college towns I’d wager the attendance discrepancy between liberal and conservative Christian students partly boils down to the lack of liberal/moderate congregations with sizeable budgets. Though I don’t think it is the only factor here.
I was in college for much of the early 2010’s and the population of the college town was roughly 50% college students and 50% permanent residents. The permanent residents skewed towards wealthy conservative retirees and so the churches with the largest budgets for college youth programs also skewed conservative.
To give a concrete example, the largest Evangelical church hosted weekly Cru nights with 1000+ students and had an annual budget of 5 figures, while the largest Mainline church (Methodist) had fewer than 10 students in their youth group and met over takeout pizza a conference room.
How do we judge the validity of statistics on markers that are self-identifying? If the question is how many people at least 6 feet tall do this or that, it's easier to quantify (excluding those who use lifts in their shoes), but claiming to be Christian doesn't have a 100% clear method of verification. I know some of my friends would claim I'm not a Christian because I'm affirming of the LGBTQ+ community. And I would certainly wonder about some who claim Christ but support hate and brutality.
I get a lot of comments like - "Yeah, but show me the TRUE Christians!"
How do I operationalize a true Christian vs an untrue one? Is there an objective standard for such a thing. If so, I would love to point to a definition that everyone would agree with.
Lurking behind this is the issue of how much weight a person assigns various issues. It should be fairly obvious that both Democrats and Republicans, Left and Right advocate for things that are morally problematic, but people will litigate those differently-- and shouldn't be told they are not good Christians if they do not make, say, abortion their be-all, end-all issue.
Which 257 colleges surveyed might matter, as that is probably less than 10% of the American colleges. Jesuit, Baptist, or Christian colleges might skew this. So might a few mega state universities.
Religion is only one identity that students have that is scripted before they enter college. I wonder what the graphs would look like if matched to SATs which were obtained before enrollment or GPA of juniors or seniors obtained after enrollment.
If the standard here is every American college (or even most colleges), the cost to do such as a survey would be in the millions of dollars. Probably tens of millions the more that I think about it.
And here's the full list of all 257 schools that were included in FIRE 2026:
I wrote a 12 part series called the 2024 Election Post-Mortem where I go into depth into how basically every single Christian group has voted in the last five election cycles. Searching the archive should bring that up.
"Simply put, religious people tend to gravitate toward a conservative political ideology and tend to favor the Republican Party on election day." Alternative wording: Religious people tend to choose doctrinally conservative (often ancient) forms of faith -- Christian and Jewish -- and, thus, tend to vote against political leaders who advocate cultural and moral policies that clash with their beliefs (including a traditionally liberal approach to the First Amendment, affecting freedom of speech, freedom of association and freedom of religious practice).
Hi Terry, as you know I am an Orthodox Christian (convert of thirty years), and it doesn't get more traditionalist than Orthodoxy in Christianity. Nevertheless my politics do not skew to the Right: I regard today's MAGA Republicanism as morally toxic, though I have voted for non-MAGA Republicans (e.g., Larry Hogan as governor of Maryland). In 2024 I voted for the American Solidarity Party since I could not in good conscience vote for either major presidential candidate.
Read my comment again. I stressed people voting against candidates that threatened their beliefs. I did say that they automatically vote MAGA or, if they felt forced to vote MAGA, they didn’t yearn for other choices. Remember the 2016 numbers that showed that half of white evangelicals that voted for Trump didn’t WANT to? BTW, I am also a third party voter.
How you square this with Jews being one of the most persistent liberal voting blocks in the US? And Hinduism is as ancient as Judaism, but they're *also* solidly blue here. I don't think people with conservative tendencies are converting to Judaism, and most people don't "choose" their religion--they stick to what they were raised with or leave, but there isn't a lot of swapping.
Read the numbers on ORTHODOX Jews.
Well, if you only meant Orthodox, you should have specified :)
It's an odd choice for an "ancient" tradition, though, since Orthodox Judaism is actually one of the *youngest* Jewish sects. It's a revival movement that's only about 200 years old.
Here is what I wrote: "Religious people tend to choose doctrinally conservative (often ancient) forms of faith -- Christian and Jewish ..."
I appreciate the thoughtful analysis and your willingness to look for what data is available and study it. I do regret the lack of interest in surveying the majority of young people in that age group who are not college students. I would think there might be substantial differences between college and working class young adults.
You haven't discussed race. I'd imagine non-white Christians (Black Protestants, Hispanic Catholics, some Asians) would look more like the world religions and less like white Christians. In particular, this helps to explain the outlier position of LDS, who are overwheling white.
In college towns I’d wager the attendance discrepancy between liberal and conservative Christian students partly boils down to the lack of liberal/moderate congregations with sizeable budgets. Though I don’t think it is the only factor here.
I was in college for much of the early 2010’s and the population of the college town was roughly 50% college students and 50% permanent residents. The permanent residents skewed towards wealthy conservative retirees and so the churches with the largest budgets for college youth programs also skewed conservative.
To give a concrete example, the largest Evangelical church hosted weekly Cru nights with 1000+ students and had an annual budget of 5 figures, while the largest Mainline church (Methodist) had fewer than 10 students in their youth group and met over takeout pizza a conference room.
What does conservative mean?
The traditional definition is traditional beliefs but is that true? That would make Stalinist and Maoists believers in Russia and China conservative.
No one believes this, so one has to define the term conservative differently. But what is it?
Similarly, the term “right” has no definition that makes sense while “left” does. Yet we use both all the time.
How do we judge the validity of statistics on markers that are self-identifying? If the question is how many people at least 6 feet tall do this or that, it's easier to quantify (excluding those who use lifts in their shoes), but claiming to be Christian doesn't have a 100% clear method of verification. I know some of my friends would claim I'm not a Christian because I'm affirming of the LGBTQ+ community. And I would certainly wonder about some who claim Christ but support hate and brutality.
What's the alternative to self-identification?
I get a lot of comments like - "Yeah, but show me the TRUE Christians!"
How do I operationalize a true Christian vs an untrue one? Is there an objective standard for such a thing. If so, I would love to point to a definition that everyone would agree with.
Lurking behind this is the issue of how much weight a person assigns various issues. It should be fairly obvious that both Democrats and Republicans, Left and Right advocate for things that are morally problematic, but people will litigate those differently-- and shouldn't be told they are not good Christians if they do not make, say, abortion their be-all, end-all issue.
Which 257 colleges surveyed might matter, as that is probably less than 10% of the American colleges. Jesuit, Baptist, or Christian colleges might skew this. So might a few mega state universities.
Religion is only one identity that students have that is scripted before they enter college. I wonder what the graphs would look like if matched to SATs which were obtained before enrollment or GPA of juniors or seniors obtained after enrollment.
If the standard here is every American college (or even most colleges), the cost to do such as a survey would be in the millions of dollars. Probably tens of millions the more that I think about it.
And here's the full list of all 257 schools that were included in FIRE 2026:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1DXJoDTLii4d6obry0eXSpVyEzsxZZlnEZLmTnW4q19U/edit?usp=sharing
Ryan, where can I find the info on political affiliation of Christians?
I wrote a 12 part series called the 2024 Election Post-Mortem where I go into depth into how basically every single Christian group has voted in the last five election cycles. Searching the archive should bring that up.
Thanks.