U.S. religious groups and their political leanings

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Mormons are the most heavily Republican-leaning religious group in the U.S., while a pair of major historically black Protestant denominations – the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church and the National Baptist Convention – are two of the most reliably Democratic groups, according to data from Pew Research Center’s 2014 Religious Landscape Study.
Seven-in-ten U.S. Mormons identify with the Republican Party or say they lean toward the GOP, compared with 19% who identify as or lean Democratic – a difference of 51 percentage points. That’s the biggest gap in favor of the GOP out of 30 religious groups we analyzed, which include Protestant denominations, other religious groups and three categories of people who are religiously unaffiliated.
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At the other end of the spectrum, an overwhelming majority of members of the AME Church (92%) identify with or lean toward the Democratic Party, while just 4% say they favor the Republican Party (an 88-point gap). Similarly, 87% of members of the National Baptist Convention and 75% of members of the Church of God in Christ (another historically black denomination) identify as Democrats.
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pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/02/23/u-s-religious-groups-and-their-political-leanings/
 
Couple of things stand out to me.

First was obviously the JW’s who don’t in general lean either way. But that’s not surprising given their teachings. Still a stark difference when compared to the rest of the religions.

Catholics leaning Democrat would seem to track with the similar polling that finds the majority of Catholics disagree with the church on different social (and by extension political) issues. And it continues to highlight a disconnect between the Catholic leadership and the apparently average self identifying Catholic.

I found the Orthodox political leanings to be a tad surprising in that was even more Democrat leaning than Catholicism.

As an Episcopalian I did find it interesting that Pew is polling Episcopalians and Anglicans (which I presume are the Continuing movements) separately. Though the results of the two branches of the Anglican family don’t surprise me too much with the ECUSA having skewed Democrat/Independent and the Continuing Anglicans having skewed more Republican.
 
Historically the blue collar Catholics and blue collar Orthodox would lean heavily Democrat, post FDR and Kennedy, even though they had traditionally disagreed with certain positions. However, the children of the blue collars are merely cultural Catholics and Orthodox and most no longer hold those disagreements. Prime example. George Stephanopolous at ABCNews - formerly worked for the Clintons. His dad is a Greek Orthodox priest.
 
SyroMalankara said:
Historically the blue collar Catholics and blue collar Orthodox would lean heavily Democrat, post FDR and Kennedy, even though they had traditionally disagreed with certain positions. However, the children of the blue collars are merely cultural Catholics and Orthodox and most no longer hold those disagreements. Prime example. George Stephanopolous at ABCNews - formerly worked for the Clintons. His dad is a Greek Orthodox priest.
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I wonder what it is that skews the Orthodox Church even further to the political left than the Catholic Church however, particularly given the core doctrines and beliefs of both churches would comparably politically classified as conservative. Are the Orthodox just further down that path of generationally moving Democratic as you suggest? Did the Orthodox have more of a blue collar background as a whole?

It would be an interesting thing for someone to inquire into further. Overall though it would seem that the Orthodox and Catholic churches do share a similar issue of self identifying members of their faiths not necessarily towing the line of the church leadership at least politically speaking. I’d be interested to see if specific polling on social/theological issues tracks the same disconnect for Orthodox as it does when specific polling has been done for Catholicism.
 
Also, I believe that Ralph Nader is Greek Orthdox. His views are VERY left-leaning and he reminds me of Bernie Sanders.
 
Padres1969 said:
As an Episcopalian I did find it interesting that Pew is polling Episcopalians and Anglicans (which I presume are the Continuing movements) separately. Though the results of the two branches of the Anglican family don’t surprise me too much with the ECUSA having skewed Democrat/Independent and the Continuing Anglicans having skewed more Republican.
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Surprised that they separated them or surprised that they polled them? I imagine the group labeled “Anglican” are the churches that are part of the “Continuum” and those part of the “Realignment.” This would make up a significantly large group and thus worthy of polling.
 
Aslan10 said:
Surprised that they separated them or surprised that they polled them? I imagine the group labeled “Anglican” are the churches that are part of the “Continuum” and those part of the “Realignment.” This would make up a significantly large group and thus worthy of polling.
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Surprised that they separated them and that they polled them.

I agree that the continuing movement (and the realignment) do make up a decent percentage of overall Anglicanism in the US and is worthy of being polled. With them comprised of smaller and sometimes dissimilar groups I can see how it would possibly be harder to do so however. But it’s appropriate that they were polled separately and I applaud Pew for doing so as I believe this is the first poll they’ve run I’ve seen the Continuing Anglican movement represented.
 
Padres1969 said:
I wonder what it is that skews the Orthodox Church even further to the political left than the Catholic Church however, particularly given the core doctrines and beliefs of both churches would comparably politically classified as conservative. Are the Orthodox just further down that path of generationally moving Democratic as you suggest? Did the Orthodox have more of a blue collar background as a whole?

It would be an interesting thing for someone to inquire into further. Overall though it would seem that the Orthodox and Catholic churches do share a similar issue of self identifying members of their faiths not necessarily towing the line of the church leadership at least politically speaking. I’d be interested to see if specific polling on social/theological issues tracks the same disconnect for Orthodox as it does when specific polling has been done for Catholicism.
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Well, one party is vocally anti-immigrant and wants to close borders. Both Churches are comprised heavily of 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th generation immigrants. Why would anyone want their grandparents or cousins deported? Even if conservative on certain issues - abortion, marriage, etc… the anti-immigrant and anti-littleguy (pro-corporate) statements turn off a lot of immigrant and immigrant-descended folks.
 
I thought JW’s don’t participate in voting in the elections and I don’t believe they serve in the military either.
 
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