Making up a growing wing of liberals, they split on cultural issues with Black Democratic voters, a political scientist says
“Almost a quarter of the people who voted in Democratic primaries—and an even larger share of the people who donate money and work for campaigns—are secular,” Brian Schaffner says. Photo: Shutterstock
In the recent New York mayoral election, exit polls indicated that Zohran Mamdani received 79% of the secular white vote, but just 56% from Black voters. That didn’t surprise Brian Schaffner.
The Newhouse Professor of Civic Studies at Tufts, Schaffner studies American voting patterns and has been doing research on the growing strength of secular voters—who are overwhelmingly liberal—and what it might mean for politics in America.
Four identity groups are big enough to polarize elections in America, he says. “There are those who vote overwhelmingly Democratic—Black people, secular Americans, and LGBTQ voters—and there are white evangelical Christians, who vote overwhelmingly Republican,” he says.
Together they make up a slim majority of Americans, and “are super polarized,” Schaffner says. “They feel like the center of America doesn’t really represent them, and they vote for the party that they support 80% of the time or more.”
“You have these four groups that are anchoring American politics, but in the middle you do have something that much more closely resembles the melting pot ideal.”
In the mid-1980s, only 5% of Americans identified as atheist or agnostic, but now up to 15% identify as secular. They also make up an outsized percentage of staunch Democratic supporters. “Almost a quarter of the people who voted in Democratic primaries—and an even larger share of the people who donate money and work for campaigns—are secular,” he says.
“If you think about who Democratic politicians are hearing from about the issues, it’s these secular Americans,” Schaffner adds. “They generally have very liberal positions on the issues, and they can have an outsized effect on both who wins primaries and on the types of issue positions candidates prioritize when they’re running for office.”
Black Voters Have Different Views
On the other hand, while Black voters support the Democratic Party at about the same rate as secular voters, “if you look at their issue positions, they are very different,” Schaffner says. “Black people are much more moderate in terms of their issue attitudes. For example, they have fairly conservative views on immigration and abortion relative to secular whites.”
In general, Americans vote “very much in line with their issue positions, except for one group—Black Americans. They give Democrats 18 percentage points more support than their issue positions would predict,” he says.
While Black voters have historically chosen Democratic candidates as a matter of course, “things like this often don’t have to last forever,” Schaffner says. “Southern whites were loyal to the Democratic Party long after the party started becoming too liberal for them, but eventually they became Republicans. Now there’s a lot of talk of whether Republicans are making inroads with this group.”
“I think Republicans were pretty smart in 2024 to focus on things like trans rights and immigration—wedge issues designed to split the other party’s base.”
In the 2024 presidential election, “the vote that Black people gave Harris was the lowest that they had given a Democratic nominee since we started tracking this with exit polls about 50 years ago,” Schaffner says.
The contrast between the two groups was apparent in 2020, too. In the presidential primaries, secular Democrats “were really enthusiastic supporters of candidates like Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, but it was the Black Democrats in South Carolina who revived the more moderate Joe Biden candidacy and ultimately helped push him to victory,” says Schaffner. “A lot of people at the time thought Black Democrats in South Carolina did Democrats a big favor by pushing them to nominate the more moderate candidate.”
But as Black Democrats become a relatively smaller group in relation to secular Democrats, “that’s going to happen less and less,” he says.
Wedge Issues and the Secular-Black Divide
Republicans have, of course, noticed the split, too. “I think Republicans were pretty smart in 2024 to focus on things like trans rights and immigration—wedge issues designed to split the other party’s base,” he says. Those issues divided some Black Democratic voters from the secular wing of the party, he adds.
What can Democrats do in response? “Secular Democrats need to give Democratic candidates the leeway to be a little bit more moderate on some of these issues than they might prefer,” Schaffner says. “The bottom line is, if focusing on these issues is going to keep you from getting elected, then you’re going to be able to do less to help the people being targeted by the opponent.”
While race and religion are the two strongest predictors of people’s political attitudes in America, Brian Schaffner says, not all religions are very predictive.
It makes more sense, he says, to focus on economic issues, which bridge the gap between secular liberals and Black people. On issues like minimum wage or Medicare, Black voters are “much more in line with secular Democrats,” Schaffner says.
What does that mean for Democratic Party supporters? “One thing that Democrats can do to reduce the tension would be to focus on those issues where there are fewer divides between these groups, the more bread and butter issues,” he says.
What About the Rest of Voters?
While the four polarized groups make up slightly more than 50% of the electorate, there’s still a large number of Americans in the middle who are more moderate and are generally not that polarized, Schaffner says.
For example, while white evangelical Christians vote overwhelmingly Republican—and they make up about 23 to 25% of the electorate—the other major component of Republican Party supporters are white Christians who are not evangelical. “They are much more moderate on these cultural issues like gay marriage, abortion rights, trans rights,” says Schaffner.
But they “have basically given license to white evangelicals to set the agenda on that set of issues so that they can get what they want, things like tax cuts and deregulation,” he says.
In general, Americans vote “very much in line with their issue positions, except for one group—Black Americans. They give Democrats 18 percentage points more support than their issue positions would predict.”
While race and religion are the two strongest predictors of people’s political attitudes in America, Schaffner says, not all religions are very predictive. For example, another group that’s often lumped together with atheists and agnostics—but who Schaffner puts in their own category—are people who say that they identify with no religion in particular.
That group sometimes does go to church, but it doesn’t define who they are. “We treat them separately because they are not really as strongly Democratic in terms of their voting behavior,” he says.
“You have these four groups that are anchoring American politics, but in the middle you do have something that much more closely resembles the melting pot ideal,” he says.
