Thread by @ryanburge

For all the talk about how conservative Christians are the most involved in the political process, let me share some data.

Atheists engage in many political activities at 2x the rate of white evangelicals.

🧵 with graphs!

graphsaboutreligion.com/p/no-one-parti…

In political activities of every type, atheists are the most active or tied for the most active.

Most likely to donate money, contact a public official, put up a political yard sign.

But also score high on attending political meetings and volunteering for a campaign.

I took all six acts, added them up, and calculated the mean political activity score.

Guess who is at the top? Atheists, followed closely by Jews.

Then a huge gap.

Average atheist: 1.52 political acts.
Average American: .91.

Atheists are ~65% more politically engaged.

But maybe this is because atheists typically have higher education and higher income, right?

So I tested that in a regression.

At every level of education, atheists are at the very top end of political engagement. Jews are a little lower.

Christians are nowhere close.

This is crystal clear when it comes to making a political donation. This every election year from 2012 through 2022.

In every recent election cycle an atheist is TWICE as likely to donate compared to a white evangelical.

The narrative needs to change a bit.

But there are a lot more white evangelicals than atheists, obviously.

However, the gap is not as big as most people would guess.

In the 2020 data, 4.7% of the entire sample were white evangelicals who made a political donation.

But! 3.1% were atheist donors.

The Religious Right was easily the most important religion and politics story of the last 50 years.

What will more than likely dominate this part of the political world in the next 50 years will be growing importance of non-religious Americans.

They are activated and engaged.