Crossroads Podcast: Is it ‘News’ That Many Religious Voters May Stay Home?

If an editor wanted to craft a headline that would ignite the telephone switchboards for conservative and Christian talk shows, this would probably be it: “Study says 32 million Christians likely not to vote.”

The study in question came from the Cultural Research Center at Arizona Christian University and it made headlines in conservative media — but not in the mainstream press. That inspired a series of questions that “Crossroads” host Todd Wilken and I discussed during this week’s podcast.

But first, here is some key material from the Arizona Capitol Times report on this study — the very report with that punchy headline mentioned earlier.

A new study by a researcher at Arizona Christian University says 32 million Christians who are regular churchgoers are likely to stay home this election.

And that, according to the report by George Barna, will likely hurt Donald Trump more than Kamala Harris.

Just to be clear, this was a Cultural Research Center effort led by the founder of the Barna Group, who is now an ACU professor, but it was not conducted by the nationally known Barna Group polling team.

Question No. 1: Are we talking about “Christian” voters? What does that mean? Actually, some of the results focused on a different term. Let’s go back to that news report:

“The research indicates that as many as 104 million people of faith are unlikely to vote in this upcoming election,” it says. That is defined in the report to include those who describe themselves as “a person of religious faith” or someone associated with a recognized religious faith, including Christianity, Judaism, Mormonism, Islam and other faiths.

As to why they’re not voting, the reports says two thirds said they lacked interest in politics and elections. Other reasons cited include a dislike of all the major candidates, a feeling that none of the candidates reflect their most important views, and that the election has become too controversial for their liking. And there’s something else.

“Almost half of the non-voters were deterred by the belief that the election outcome will be rigged,” according to Barna’s report, with an equal number saying they don’t know enough about candidates to choose one.

OK, here is question No. 2: If that many people of faith stay home, is that unusual? 

Most of the time, about 66% of eligible U.S. voters headed to the polls in the last three national elections, according to Pew Research Center. The relevant question is whether the Cultural Research Center poll contains evidence that significantly more “regular churchgoers” will sit out the 2024 election than in the recent past.

In my national “On Religion” column this week (“An ‘Old News’ Protestant Voting Mashup For The Election”), the omnipresent religion-statistics expert Ryan Burge said that it’s pretty normal for about half of “Christian voters” in America to stay home on election day.

Thus, question No. 3: What was the goal of this ACU poll? It’s safe to say that it was inspired by Donald Trump-era debates about whether Christians have a faith-based obligation to vote. Some would say that it’s a “sin” not to vote or even that it is a “sin” not to vote for Trump — especially in an era when so many issues linked to religious liberty and parental rights are in play.

Question No. 4: If we are talking about Christians heading to the polls, what kind of “Christian voters” are most likely to vote and who are they most likely to support?

That’s a very complex question, one that Burge addressed in a recent Graphs about Religion post with this headline: “How 40 Protestant Denominations Voted in the Last Four Presidential Elections.” And here is another must-read Burge offering linked to this question: “What Religious Groups are The Most Politically Active?” Check out this chart:

OK, what kinds of groups are at the top of that list? Burge noted:

… Members of the Episcopal Church and the United Church of Christ were more politically engaged than any of the other Protestant groups in the sample. In 2020, the average member of these traditions engaged in at least 1.6 acts. For comparison, the mean in the entire sample of these denominations was .94. The next group on the list were people who identified as interdenominational, but don't ask me what that actually means in practice. I honestly don’t know.

Then there are a bunch of groups clustered right around the mean. There are some pretty prominent denominations in this part of the graph — United Methodists, non-denominational evangelicals, and Evangelical Lutherans. They checked about one box of the six on average during the 2020 presidential campaign.

Then, there’s a pretty noticeable gap before we arrive at Southern Baptists. In 2020, they engaged in .79 activities — that’s about 15% lower than the mean for the other 19 Protestant groups that I looked at in the sample. In other words — Southern Baptists just don’t engage in the political process at high rates.

That’s interesting, to say the least. However, readers also need to remember that, after decades of declining numbers in the “Seven Sisters” mainline world, there are way more people in evangelical, Pentecostal and nondenominational pews than there are in liberal, progressive pews.

So one final question, which would be No. 5: What trends should interest religion-news consumers in the 2024 election and the post-election polling?

As in the past two elections, I would stress the importance of Latino evangelicals and Pentecostal believers in crucial states like Florida, Georgia and Arizona. And, as always, Catholic voters (along with Lutherans, both liberal and conservative) will be crucial in Midwestern swing states.

What about the Black voters that are so crucial to the Democratic Party base? 

There has been plenty of ink spilled, in recent months, about the potential for Trump to win the votes of African-American men. I hope that some of the exit polls yield fresh information about voters in Black church pews — especially whether frequent churchgoers in Black evangelical and Pentecostal churches were more likely to vote for Trump.

Enjoy the podcast and, please, pass it on to others.