Religion and the Future of Latinx Politics
Feb 27, 2025 8:44 pm
Last week I addressed how polarization has impacted the Big Three religion cohorts in the Latinx population: Catholics, the nones, and evangélicos. Comparing the latest partisan identity data reported by Pew with the 2014 Pew Landscape survey results shows that though Republicans have made gains among Latinxs in the Trump and post-Trump era, Democrats have gained even more.
However, comparing percentages across two points in time misses an important nuance. Latinx Catholics, nones, and evangélicos are not equal in size. Though saying this sound obvious, Pew’s report showing only the religious distribution of the party coalitions within the Latinx population gives the impression that there are similar numbers of Democrats and Republicans. From other surveys and election results, we know the ratio of Democrats to Republicans is about two to one.
Measuring Partisan Change Among the Latinx Big Three Cohorts
From Pew, we know that a plurality of Latinxs are Catholic (43%), that nones account for 30% of the adult population, and that half as many are evangélicos (15%). We also know the percentage in each cohort that identifies with or leans toward the Democratic and Republican parties. We also know the percentage of those with no partisan lean in each cohort (see the chart in last week’s post).
From the Census Bureau, we know the size of the adult Latinx population. In 2014 there were 37.1 million Latinx adults (18 years and older). In 2021 (the last year available), the Latinx population had grown to 43.7 million, an increase of 6.6 million persons.
How Have the Cohorts Changed?
In 2014 I estimate that 17.8 million Latinx adults identified as Catholic (48% of 37.1 million). By 2021/22, the total had increased by nearly one million to 18.7 million.
In 2014 9.1 million Catholics (51%) identified as Democrats and 3.7 million (21%) as Republicans, while about 5 million (28%) had no partisan preference. By 2022, Catholics increased by 4.4 million to 13.5 million, but Republicans increased by just 200,000, from 3.7 million to 3.9 million. The number of non-partisan Catholics decreased from 5 million to 1.3 million.
Evangélicos went through the most drastic changes. It was the only cohort to shrink in adherents. Catholics shrank as a share of the Latinx population but still gained adherents. Evangélicos’ adherents decreased from 7.1 million to 6.6 million. In eight years, they lost 500,000 members.
In 2014 2.9 million evangélicos identified with the GOP; by 2022, half of evangélicos (3.3 million) identified as Republican, a gain of 400,000. However, the number of Democrats among evangélicos increased from 2.2 million to 2.9 million between 2014 and 2022. Even I was surprised that Democrats gained more ground than Republicans among evangélicos.
Finally, the nones experienced the fastest growth. They went from 7.4 million in 2014 to 13.1 million in 2022, a 6.3 million person increase. Though they were, and still are, the least likely to identify as nonpartisan, their number decreased from 2.3 million to 1.3 million. Republicans more than doubled among Latinx nones, from 1.3 million to 3.1 million, a net increase of 1.8 million. Once again, the gains among Democrats were even more impressive. In 2014 there were 3.8 million Latinx nonreligious Democrats. By 2022, the number had increased to 8.7 million, a 4.9 million increase.
The GOP’s Latinx Reinassance Has a Math Problem
I’ve been saying this for years, literally. In 2010, writing for Religion in the News, the newsletter of Trinity College’s Greenberg Center, I wrote that the GOP had an increasing Latinx problem because of stagnant Protestantism and growing secularism. Then, in 2019, I revisited the topic in the Religion in Public blog. I stand by my conclusion in that piece:
In conclusion, Latinx religious identity has changed dramatically in the last decade. More Latinxs are abandoning religion, particularly Catholicism, as has been happening in American society. The shift is not only affecting religious identification, but also Latinx politics. The nones are younger and more politically liberal than Catholics and Protestants. The Republican Party has been reliant on overwhelming support among Latinx Protestants as it tried to make the Latinx vote competitive in elections. Yet, as Latinx nones have grown, Latinx Protestants plateaued, meaning that fewer Latinxs are drawn to the GOP’s conservative message. It is unlikely that the nones will be as receptive as Protestants to GOP messaging in the short term, and while Democrats have not gained as much in terms of identification, the increasing nonreligious-driven liberalism of Latinxs is more in line with the Progressive wing of the party.
It took Pew 13 years to admit what I could gather from analyzing the available data at the time. The data I used included their own data. But, of course, Pew was too invested in the narrative that a Latinx Reformation was going on. It was as if the brand of Protestantism that most Latinx were joining wasn’t as toxic as the Catholicism they were leaving.
Then, we get to 2020, and the main story is that racist Trump is making inroads among Latinxs (and other people of color). We got no nuance about the type of people of color Trump was attracting. For example, Latinxs weren’t randomly drawn toward Trump. Certain types of evangélicos were. You could say the same about Black and Asian Trump supporters. These were people attracted by Christian Nationalism. As the PRRI Christian Nationalism poll released earlier this year shows, 25% of Latinx evangélicos and 20% of Black evangelicals are Christian Nationalists.
The 2020 election was atypical in many ways. Trump gained 10.5 million votes compared to his 2016 total. Yet Biden gained 13.5 million more votes than Hillary Clinton. More Americans voted in that election than in any other ever.
Two things stand out when comparing the 2020 exit polls to the 2016 ones. Trump improved among people of color, and Biden improved among white men. The candidates’ gains among those groups show where they had probably maxed out support. Thus, increasing white support for Biden or increasing support among people of color for Trump will stand out.
The Latinx data suggests as much. Evangélicos are the most Republican-leaning, and there are more Republican Latinx nones. The PRRI Christian Nationalism survey suggests that the GOP's anti-democratic and authoritarian Christian wing attracts many evangélicos. The nones, less so.
And here’s where the math hurts the GOP., even when they gain, they lose. Of course, a whole media ecosystem is designed to amplify anything that is slightly good news for the GOP. This is why we don’t get stories about the evangélicos trending toward Democrats but are bombarded by stories of evangélicos as the next GOP frontier. Between 2014 and 2022, 1.1 million more evangélicos were identified as partisans. Of those, 63% identified with the Democrats and 37% with Republicans.
Moreso with the nones. There were 6.7 million more partisan Latinx nones in 2022 than in 2014. Seventy-three percent identified as Democrats and 27% as Republicans. With fewer Latinxs eschewing party labels, the number of Latinxs that are up for grabs in the near future is shrinking. The GOP may have maxed out on evangélicos: they are shrinking as a share of the population, and their GOP identification increased marginally. The same with the nones. Even if they get one-quarter of newer Latinx nones, two-thirds to three-quarters often reject the GOP. Like most nones, regardless of race, Latinx nones are not keen on Christian Nationalism. What the GOP has to offer regarding real policy or culture war is not just appealing. Of course, whether the Democrats can capitalize on that or mess up, as usual, remains to be seen.
In other news…
- I was one of the experts interviewed for a Washington Post article about the increase in Latinx nones. It is one of the best articles I’ve seen about the subject in a major newspaper in almost 15 years of doing this work. It also featured the insights of my friends Arlene Ríos and Karina Quintanilla.
- A new analysis by Axios finds that elected officials are more religious than the nation they represent. I’ll have more to say about this next week.
