How the 2024 elections went for openly non-religious candidates

There were more on the ballot than ever before. There were more winners, too.

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With the 2024 elections over, a lot has been (and will continue to be) written about the results. Most of it is depressing. Here’s an attempt to find some silver linings.

(Image via Adobe Spark)

82% of white evangelicals voted for Donald Trump, according to the initial exit polls, similar to the past two elections. But they represented a shrinking 22% of the electorate. Four years ago, they represented 28% of voters.

Incredibly, though, 71% of non-religious Americans supported Kamala Harris, and that represented 24% of voters, a big jump from the 65% of “Nones” who supported Joe Biden in 2020, when we were 22% of voters.

Even though religious conservatives control just about every lever of the federal government for years to come, it’s the Americans with no organized religion who represent an ever-growing part of the Democratic base.

It would be nice, then, if Democrats started acting like it, with more targeted outreach to non-religious Americans. It’s harder to reach us because we’re, by definition, not organized, but there could be a way to reach those voters (without alienating others) by pushing back against Christian Nationalism and proudly defending church/state separation.

With that in mind, it’s also worth looking at how openly non-religious candidates did at the state and federal level.

With the help of a spreadsheet compiled by myself and the Center for Freethought Equality PAC (the political action committee affiliated with the Center for Freethought Equality, which is the political and advocacy arm of the American Humanist Association), we knew there were 38 “Nones” running for their respective State Senates and 125 running for State Houses. Another 7 were running for U.S. Congress. And 22 members of the Congressional Freethought Caucus were also on the ballot. You can see the full list of openly non-religious candidates running for office in 2024 right here.

Outside of the CFC, these candidates use a variety of non-religious labels to describe themselves, but none of them subscribe to organized religion.

Did they succeed? Did their non-theism hurt their chances? What can we learn from their races?

Here are some of my takeaways.

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In 2022, there were 72 openly non-religious elected officials at the state level (or higher) across the country. This year, there will be at least 77 with a few close races still left to call.

The Center for Freethought Equality put this in context for me:

Prior to the 2016 election there were only five elected officials serving in state legislatures who publicly identified with the humanist and atheist community.

After the 2016 election that number grew to 17, 47 after the 2018 election, 63 after the 2020 election, and 72 after the 2022 election.

Once the newly elected officials are sworn into office in 2025, there will be more than 75 humanist and atheist elected officials at the federal and state level serving in 33 states.

To go from virtually no openly non-theistic public officials a decade ago to this many today is stunning. It’s not just a shift in culture; it’s a huge testament to groups that pushed for this to happen.

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For the first time, the Congressional Freethought Caucus lost a member in an upset (as opposed to a retirement or redistricting).

Rep. Susan Wild of Pennsylvania was one of a handful of Democrats whose seats were flipped by Republicans. After three terms, she lost her seat 51%-49%. Her loss was part of a red shift in the state, though, and not the result of Wild’s involvement with the CFC.

The other members of the CFC, however, won their seats and as far as I could tell, their membership in the caucus was never a campaign issue for any of them. Hopefully, that’s more incentive for other members of Congress to join the group in the next Congress, especially since the focus will inevitably be on the chaos caused by the other party.

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The challengers who ran for Congress came up empty. 0 for 7. However, in some of those cases, the alternative may have been no opposition candidate at all. That doesn’t mean their candidacies were worthless, though. By running, and giving voters an opportunity to vote for someone instead of leaving that race blank, they may have even galvanized some voters to support other candidates elsewhere on the ticket. Reverse coattails for the win!

And considering those candidates were openly non-religious and running in deeply red districts, while never making their non-religiosity the centerpiece of their campaigns, their work could help normalize secularism in future races.

They lost because they were Democrats in ruby-red parts of the country, not because they were atheists.

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There were also two secular Republicans running for office.

Colorado State Rep. Ryan Armagost, who calls himself agnostic but says he believes in a “higher power,” comfortably won his race.

The same can’t be said for New Hampshire State Rep. Brandon Phinney. He previously dabbled as a Libertarian and lost a race before switching back to the GOP in 2022 and winning his race by a mere 15 votes. This time around, though, another tight race is going in the other direction. It hasn’t officially been called, but Phinney is currently losing by 90 votes with 99% of the votes counted.

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Finally, I had previously posted about Sarah Henry, a Democrat who was running to defeat an incumbent Republican for a seat in the Florida State House. (Henry had previously worked for the American Humanist Association.)

This was a rematch from two years ago when the Republican won by just a couple of points. But this time around, her opponent tried exploiting previous comments she made denouncing Christian Nationalism, opposing state-sponsored displays of religion, and calling for an end to coercive prayers at public high schools.

Did the criticism work?

It’s hard to tell. Henry lost the race by a razor-thin margin for the second straight time. Was that due to successful attack ads or because she always faced an uphill climb against a Republican incumbent in a red state?

I do think there’s an interesting lesson in that loss, though, and it requires knowing about a similar race a few years ago.

In 2016, in Tennessee, Gayle Jordan, the director of a group called Recovering From Religion, chose to run for State Senate as a Democrat against an incumbent Republican in a very red district. It seemed futile, but Jordan didn’t think it was right for that opponent to run unopposed. She ended up losing by a whopping 50-point margin. Did that make her a bad candidate? Of course not. A Jesus-loving Democrat wouldn’t have fared much better.

That Republican later resigned in order to fill a post in the Trump administration.

That meant there would be a special election in 2018… and Jordan chose to run again, this time against a different Republican.

Then something bizarre happened.

The Tennessee Republican Party waged a smear campaign against her, drawing attention to her non-religious beliefs. They called her a “radical atheist.” The Lt. Governor called her “dangerous.” They sent out flyers calling her “kooky.” They took a joke she made on Facebook out of context and used it to suggest she was a traitor. In that particular case, they even used a picture of Jordan with a gay couple, literally triggering the PTSD of one of those men who happened to serve in the military.

It was a lot of activity for a race that a Republican would almost certainly have won by doing absolutely nothing.

It’s not surprising that Jordan lost that special election.

What was surprising, however, is that she actually narrowed the gap, losing by 42 points instead. Despite all the negative attention on her atheism, she managed to do better compared to her previous campaign. In that sense, the attacks didn’t hurt her one bit. (I will note that one election was in a presidential election year; the other wasn’t. It’s not an apples to apples comparison.)

So what’s the situation in Sarah Henry’s case?

In 2022, she lost a two-way race with 47.7% of the vote. She got 31,290 votes.

In 2024, she lost the same two-way race with 49.6% of the vote. This time, in a presidential election year, she got 44,156 votes.

Using either metric, she did better this time around, despite the attacks on her humanism.

It’s a hollow victory, obviously, because it’s not a victory at all. But her race suggests that good candidates with a non-theistic background aren’t losing ground because of that. They’re winning or losing for reasons that go beyond religious labels. What could have been an albatross around her neck was mostly ignored due to larger political trends.

I have no idea if she’ll run again, but if she does, I’d like to think she’ll be even stronger next time around.

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Given all these results, it seems like an issue that has been called a taboo in American politics is quickly becoming normalized. Atheists deserve to have their views reflected in our nation’s representatives, not just because we’re a growing part of the citizenry but because we’re people who believe good policy stems from a foundation of reason, science, facts, compassion, and a desire to fix our problems since we know there’s no Higher Power that will do it for us.

Yes, we should be running for office. And yes, we deserve to get elected. We finally are! But even if that weren’t happening, politicians should approach all policy decisions by asking what our community would do because the outcome is going to be better for all Americans.

The next step is for the secular elected officials who won their races to fight for those policies and become loud, proud opponents of the attempt to Christianize our country.

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