New data reveal how religion (and atheists) shaped the 2024 presidential election

Verified voter data now shows just how much Christians rallied behind Trump—and how Secular Americans are a huge part of the Democratic base

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When it comes to how people voted in the 2024 presidential election, the numbers that pop up most often in news articles come from exit polls. While that includes people who literally just voted, the stats also include registered voters who planned to vote but perhaps didn’t. In other words, there’s some error baked into the system, even if it gives us an overall impression of who voted in which ways.

It would be more accurate if there was a way to verify that the people being surveyed actually voted, though that’s not something that can be done in the immediate aftermath of an election.

That’s why looking at verified voters gives us an even clearer look at what happened in the election, and that’s what the Pew Research Center has done in a new piece released today. They were able to confirm that panelists in their surveys actually voted by looking at separate voter files. That’s the data they’re now publishing.

What does it tell us about how various religious and non-religious groups voted?

A man voting (image via Adobe Spark)

First, let’s recall what the exit polls told us. According to the National Election Pool consortium (which feeds ABC News, CBS News, CNN, and NBC News), 82% of white evangelicals backed Donald Trump, a number that was virtually identical to 2016 and 2020.

The same survey told us that 63% of Protestants overall supported Trump (representing 43% of all voters), along with 59% of Catholics (21% of voters).

Meanwhile 71% of “Nones” supported Kamala Harris, representing 24% of voters.

In short, the numbers showed that white evangelicals haven’t changed over the past decade when it comes to their (lack of) values. Nothing Trump did during his campaigns or his first term in office offended them enough that they refused to lend him their support this time around. They have no problem having their faith defined by his actions.

The exit polls also revealed that Trump’s share of the Catholic vote went up by nine points (from 47% support to 56% support between 2020 and 2024), and that his share of the non-religious vote went down by six points (from 31% to 25%) in that same period.

So Catholics and Protests were strong Trump supporters, while Jews, Secular Americans, and members of other religious traditions supported Harris.

While the numbers from Pew are bound to be slightly different, do they tell us anything different? Yes, and they give us more specificity, too

Among Protestants, Trump’s share of the vote has only grown since 2016. He went from have 56% support (2016) to 59% support (2020) to 62% (2024). Among white evangelicals, it’s been relatively steady during that period. He’s still pulling about 81% of their vote.

But that support has also grown among non-religious Americans. Trump went from receiving 24% in 2016 to 26% in 2020 to 28% in 2024.

What about with atheists specifically? While there wasn’t much room for him get less support, he went from getting 11% of the atheist vote in 2020 to 15% in 2024.

Perhaps the biggest shift comes from the most religious Americans overall. Among the people who attend religious services at least once a month, Trump went from getting 59% support in 2020 to 64% in 2024. Roughly two out of three Americans who are regular church-goers were willing to vote for a right-wing zealot who constantly pays them lip service. It makes you wonder what the hell they’re hearing in so many of these spaces— is it a message to help the poor or a promise to punish every person who’s considered different?

Many churches now appear to be nothing more than arms of the Republican Party.

It’s also striking to see how many Black Protestants shifted from supporting the Democrat in 2020 (91%!) to an actual Black candidate in 2024 (83%). Granted that they could realistically only move in that direction, it’s still a shock.

Another set of interesting data points comes from the religious makeup of each party’s base.

Democratic voters have become less religious over the years. Protestants were 38% of the base in 2016, then 35% in 2020, then 32% in 2024. Meanwhile, “Unaffiliated” voters are now 39% of the pool.

For Republicans, the shift is much smaller. Protestants are a slightly smaller part of their base now than in the past—54% today compared to 58% four years ago—but it’s not like they’ve made up for it among non-Christian groups, where the relative support has only gone up a percentage point or two. Still, 76% of Republican voters are Catholic or Protestant. Those groups make up only 50% of Democratic voters.

(Republicans appeared to make up ground by appealing to groups like young men who may not give a shit about religion but fall for the talking points of right-wing propagandists on social media.)

The obvious takeaway here is that Secular Americans are the largest “religious” demographic for Democrats, and it would serve their members well to push policies and talking points that don’t use belief in God as a default assumption. Republicans, on the other hand, have every reason to continue mixing religion (specifically Christianity) and politics into everything they do because the people who might oppose that represent a small fraction of their base… and they don’t seem bothered by the religious rhetoric pushed by the party’s leaders.

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