Driggers, Hunter and Ryan P. Burge
Driggers, Hunter and Ryan P. Burge. 2021. Did the Nones Put Joe Biden in the White House? An Analysis of the Voting Patterns of the Religiously Unaffiliated in 2020. Politics and Religion Journal. https://doi.org/10.54561/prj1502313d
Publication year: 2021

The fastest growing segments of the American religious landscape are atheists, agnostics, and nothing in particulars. In 2008, these three groups together (often called the Nones) represented 22% of the population, but just twelve years later their numbers surged to 34% of the populace. Given that one in three adults is a None, it stands to reason that they are having a growing influence on electoral politics. To that end, this analysis focuses on how those three types of unaffiliated Americans shifted their political ideology, partisanship and voting patterns from 2016 to 2020. The results indicate that Donald Trump’s baseline of support dropped among all types of Nones, and that the drop was especially acute for nothing in particulars who had high household incomes in 2020.