Religion is Winning, Here's Why

As the 2012 presidential election grows closer, voter demographics will grab ever more airtime. In a finely balanced electorate, switching parties is less common, making internal growth of party bases more important. Getting the vote out is one aspect of this; population change another. Three or four decades ago, most Americans had trouble specifying which party was conservative or liberal, or matching them to issue positions. No longer. What's more, as Robert Cushing and Bill Bishop observe in The Big Sort, partisanship affects where people choose to live. Robert Putnam and David Campbell add that politics often determines where they go to church. Thus NPR's Ray Suarez relates that a scout leader he met moved from the Episcopalians to become a Mormon because he didn't want to be associated with a “fag church.” Over time, though, switching declines and battle lines solidify. As theology, ideology, and political party line up, switching becomes less important and the religious and political market is driven more by population shifts. This is not only true in the United States, but in a growing number of societies around the world.