Why Ex-Churchgoers Flocked to Trump

[twenty02]

This is an interesting piece.....there's something deeper in here about "social trust" that's probably worth exploring. Not trying to go down the same road the author is....but this number dive is very different than what you've seen before.

 

[TheOriginalHappyGoat]

This is an interesting piece.....there's something deeper in here about "community trust" that's probably worth exploring. Not trying to go down the same road the author is....but this number dive is very different than what you've seen before.

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That is absolutely fascinating.

While writing my forthcoming book, Alienated America, my research assistant Nick Saffran and I crunched some numbers provided by Emily Ekins of the Voter Study Group. We broke down Republican primary voters by church attendance. Among the most frequent attenders—those going more than once a week—Trump got about 32 percent of the vote.

Trump also got a minority of those who simply go once a week. Among those who reported going “a few times a year,” Trump got about half. He got an easy majority (55 percent) of those Republicans who “seldom” attend, and a full 62 percent of those who never attend. That is, every step down in church attendance brought a step up in Trump support, and vice versa. The most frequent attenders were half as likely to support Trump as were the least frequent attenders...

...There was one cluster defined by being non-ideological and being pessimistic about the future. Ekins labeled them the “Preservationists.” This was Trump’s strongest cluster in the GOP primaries, by far.

The Preservationists, Ekins found, were the most likely to say religion was very important to them. They were also the least likely to attend religious services.
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I'm going to have to mull over this one for a while. Thanks for sharing.

 

[twenty02]

That is absolutely fascinating.

While writing my forthcoming book, Alienated America, my research assistant Nick Saffran and I crunched some numbers provided by Emily Ekins of the Voter Study Group. We broke down Republican primary voters by church attendance. Among the most frequent attenders—those going more than once a week—Trump got about 32 percent of the vote.

Trump also got a minority of those who simply go once a week. Among those who reported going “a few times a year,” Trump got about half. He got an easy majority (55 percent) of those Republicans who “seldom” attend, and a full 62 percent of those who never attend. That is, every step down in church attendance brought a step up in Trump support, and vice versa. The most frequent attenders were half as likely to support Trump as were the least frequent attenders...

...There was one cluster defined by being non-ideological and being pessimistic about the future. Ekins labeled them the “Preservationists.” This was Trump’s strongest cluster in the GOP primaries, by far.

The Preservationists, Ekins found, were the most likely to say religion was very important to them. They were also the least likely to attend religious services.
​

I'm going to have to mull over this one for a while. Thanks for sharing.

The secularization of America is eroding trust. The elites’ replacements for church are strong public schools, country clubs, travel sports teams, and so on. The working class and middle class, it seems, lack those secular institutions of civil society, particularly after the core institution, church, dries up.
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There has to be some level of social cohesion for people to feel a part of something more than just themselves. It's human nature.