You have my empathy. Far easier (and more sane) to start with data and find the patterns than go the other way.
Let me share an anecdote from this last week on a group that will *never* show up in your data.
I was doing (non-political) surveys with an Amishman a couple weeks ago, and finished by asking who else I should talk to. He mentioned a greenhouse owner up the road, but told me not to share who sent me. I asked why, and he shared that this year they experienced a record number of pushy political canvassers. Amish aren't supposed to vote, and they nearly always follow that rule (they sometimes make exceptions for intensely local issues like milk regulation). So pushy canvassers directly undermine their shared values. Their whole settlement (~500 people) was sick of it.
I asked if there was ever a time in history when they experienced a similar level of pressure to vote? He responded without hesitation: it's never happened in the U.S., but did happen in 1930s Germany.
He wasn't comparing either political candidate to Hitler, nor was he making any predictions about what the current historical moment means. I'm only sharing it because it's a perspective that won't show up in the data, but is interesting nonetheless. Especially since there are now more practicing Amish than Episcopalians.
I must tell that adventists (according to their own statistics) make 0,349% of the american population (1.172 million in a 335M population).
Why such a specific statistic? Because 213 out of 61 000 is exactly the same share.
Don't know about the other denominations but, if you are interested in testing the internal consistency of data provided by organizations, this could actually work!
You have worked very hard to become a nationally prominent authority on credible, religous data. It appears you have earned respect and trust from both "sides of the ailse" and the "middle." That's rare in this country on any subject. The information you're providing is particularly valuable because you package it in a way that doesn't piss off reasonable people. Your hard work is much appreciated.
Thank you for your work and for sharing it so generously! Is there data that shows how other faith traditions voted in 2024 (Hindu, Buddhist, Judaism, Sikh, B 'Hai, etc.)?
I grew up hearing that there used to be a saying back in the early days of the Republican party, that the next President went in [to the White House] when the Quakers went out [of the voting booths]. Quakers helped found the GOP. They were much more influential and numerous. As a Quaker myself, I'm always curious as to what our current political make up is. It's fair to say Liberal Quakers vote Democratic, Green or Socialist (though in what numbers it's hard to say -- at my meeting is largely Democratic based on conversations). But there are more Evangelical Quakers than there are liberal ones. Still, it's not a 100% that because they are evangelical, they necessarily voted for Trump. I would guess many did, but I'm not certain. And even in my liberal meeting there were at least two who did. It's a curious question.
While most of the multi-religious surveys do not generate a sufficient cohort of a single religion, many of the denominations maintain their own data with sufficient sampling. That's how we know how we Jews voted and the distribution of our party registration, and the distribution of voting among the different Jewish subdivisions. It is likely that many of the smaller Christian sects do the same internally. Whether the data is publicly available, accessible to scholars, or purchasable, I don't know.
As a regular reader of medical studies, the text of the study always includes a methods section. In this, they have to estimate how many research subjects they will need to get a separation between the groups or interventions they are proposing to study. They they have to indicate how many they recruited. The social sciences should be able to do a parallel analysis. How many Quakers, Nazarenes, LDS etc do we need to have when assessing a binary outcome like Blue or Red. While the numbers in GSS and some of the others seems small, I don't get a sense from today's post of how many are needed in each denomination to assess validity, even though the statistical principles behind this are well known.
Thanks for this post explaining the details of the CES and providing the overall list. I know that I'm one of the people that asked about Nazarenes but I think that is for two reasons.
1. You used to describe the CES data as "here are the 30 largest denominations" but you've recently changed your language to "here are 30 *of* the largest denominations". That made a difference for the peskily pedantic chart lovers like myself.
2. The distracting presence of Free Will Baptists on this list which in 2020 had 156,895 members; fewer than your UU example.
(I have the odd coincidence of past membership in both Nazarenes and Free Will Baptists and the difference in their actual membership in the US--650,000 vs 156,895--stuck out to me in this data)
The problem with the UUs is really about branching, honestly.
The top level is stuff like Protestant, Catholic, LDS, Orthodox.
What would a UU answer to that? It's not a group that's large enough to justify having a top level answer, because you want to keep that question relatively brief. And if UUs get in there then you would need to also list groups like Sikhs. Now all of a sudden you go from 12 response options to 20 really quickly.
The most logical place in under Protestant but I think a lot of UUs would not get that.
You can't tell me stats from Metropolitan Community Churches either. It was founded by a gay pastor, Troy Perry decades ago. Worldwide it has perhaps 300k members, and as a straight member of one of those congregations, I'd bet it votes 90% Democratic. It has churches or affiliated churches in 22 nations, but its largest following is in 38 states in the U.S.
You have my empathy. Far easier (and more sane) to start with data and find the patterns than go the other way.
Let me share an anecdote from this last week on a group that will *never* show up in your data.
I was doing (non-political) surveys with an Amishman a couple weeks ago, and finished by asking who else I should talk to. He mentioned a greenhouse owner up the road, but told me not to share who sent me. I asked why, and he shared that this year they experienced a record number of pushy political canvassers. Amish aren't supposed to vote, and they nearly always follow that rule (they sometimes make exceptions for intensely local issues like milk regulation). So pushy canvassers directly undermine their shared values. Their whole settlement (~500 people) was sick of it.
I asked if there was ever a time in history when they experienced a similar level of pressure to vote? He responded without hesitation: it's never happened in the U.S., but did happen in 1930s Germany.
He wasn't comparing either political candidate to Hitler, nor was he making any predictions about what the current historical moment means. I'm only sharing it because it's a perspective that won't show up in the data, but is interesting nonetheless. Especially since there are now more practicing Amish than Episcopalians.
And what about Swedenbogians? We get no respect. Seethe, gnash!
Hi. mr. Burge
I couldn't help but noticing that in the last graph there are no Seventh-day adventists, which do appear in the first one. How many were interviewed?
Thank you.
In sample of 61,000 - 213 ID has Seventh-Day Adventist.
I must tell that adventists (according to their own statistics) make 0,349% of the american population (1.172 million in a 335M population).
Why such a specific statistic? Because 213 out of 61 000 is exactly the same share.
Don't know about the other denominations but, if you are interested in testing the internal consistency of data provided by organizations, this could actually work!
You have worked very hard to become a nationally prominent authority on credible, religous data. It appears you have earned respect and trust from both "sides of the ailse" and the "middle." That's rare in this country on any subject. The information you're providing is particularly valuable because you package it in a way that doesn't piss off reasonable people. Your hard work is much appreciated.
Really appreciate the clarity of this.
Thank you for your work and for sharing it so generously! Is there data that shows how other faith traditions voted in 2024 (Hindu, Buddhist, Judaism, Sikh, B 'Hai, etc.)?
There will be in the next 6-8 weeks
I grew up hearing that there used to be a saying back in the early days of the Republican party, that the next President went in [to the White House] when the Quakers went out [of the voting booths]. Quakers helped found the GOP. They were much more influential and numerous. As a Quaker myself, I'm always curious as to what our current political make up is. It's fair to say Liberal Quakers vote Democratic, Green or Socialist (though in what numbers it's hard to say -- at my meeting is largely Democratic based on conversations). But there are more Evangelical Quakers than there are liberal ones. Still, it's not a 100% that because they are evangelical, they necessarily voted for Trump. I would guess many did, but I'm not certain. And even in my liberal meeting there were at least two who did. It's a curious question.
While most of the multi-religious surveys do not generate a sufficient cohort of a single religion, many of the denominations maintain their own data with sufficient sampling. That's how we know how we Jews voted and the distribution of our party registration, and the distribution of voting among the different Jewish subdivisions. It is likely that many of the smaller Christian sects do the same internally. Whether the data is publicly available, accessible to scholars, or purchasable, I don't know.
As a regular reader of medical studies, the text of the study always includes a methods section. In this, they have to estimate how many research subjects they will need to get a separation between the groups or interventions they are proposing to study. They they have to indicate how many they recruited. The social sciences should be able to do a parallel analysis. How many Quakers, Nazarenes, LDS etc do we need to have when assessing a binary outcome like Blue or Red. While the numbers in GSS and some of the others seems small, I don't get a sense from today's post of how many are needed in each denomination to assess validity, even though the statistical principles behind this are well known.
Thanks for this post explaining the details of the CES and providing the overall list. I know that I'm one of the people that asked about Nazarenes but I think that is for two reasons.
1. You used to describe the CES data as "here are the 30 largest denominations" but you've recently changed your language to "here are 30 *of* the largest denominations". That made a difference for the peskily pedantic chart lovers like myself.
2. The distracting presence of Free Will Baptists on this list which in 2020 had 156,895 members; fewer than your UU example.
(I have the odd coincidence of past membership in both Nazarenes and Free Will Baptists and the difference in their actual membership in the US--650,000 vs 156,895--stuck out to me in this data)
The problem with the UUs is really about branching, honestly.
The top level is stuff like Protestant, Catholic, LDS, Orthodox.
What would a UU answer to that? It's not a group that's large enough to justify having a top level answer, because you want to keep that question relatively brief. And if UUs get in there then you would need to also list groups like Sikhs. Now all of a sudden you go from 12 response options to 20 really quickly.
The most logical place in under Protestant but I think a lot of UUs would not get that.
You can't tell me stats from Metropolitan Community Churches either. It was founded by a gay pastor, Troy Perry decades ago. Worldwide it has perhaps 300k members, and as a straight member of one of those congregations, I'd bet it votes 90% Democratic. It has churches or affiliated churches in 22 nations, but its largest following is in 38 states in the U.S.
Very interesting.