The 2024 election was a watershed moment for the Democratic coalition. It was an election in which Americans who identify as either atheist or agnostic solidified themselves as the most loyal and largest constituency in the Democratic Party. These secular Americans provided more support for Kamala Harris than any of the traditional Democratic constituent groups, including African Americans, who had previously been the party’s most loyal voters.
These are trends we have been documenting with our work on the Cooperative Election Study, a survey project that has interviewed more than 700,000 Americans over the past two decades, including 60,000 in 2024.
More American voters used to identify as religious
For most of the past century, secular Americans were a tiny segment of society, and one that did not have particularly strong political allegiances. In 1980, exit polls found that fewer than 5% of voters identified as non-religious, and those voters were split almost evenly between voting for Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan. By the 2004 election, this group of secular Americans had doubled in size and supported John Kerry over George W. Bush by a two-to-one margin. Even still, they remained a relatively small part of the Democratic Party’s base. But by 2024, nearly one-fourth of all of Kamala Harris’ votes came from people who identify as atheist or agnostic.
What our survey data shows is that the rise of the secular bloc in the Democratic Party is creating significant tension with another of the party’s key constituencies: Black Democrats. One important reason for this is that Black Democrats are, on the whole, quite religious. According to CES data, half of Black Democratic voters identify as Evangelical and nearly 80% say that religion is somewhat or very important to them.
By contrast, religion is of little or no importance to secular Democrats. Yet many contemporary cultural issues are clearly influenced by religious beliefs and traditions – which suggests a massive wedge is forming between these two wings of the party. Indeed, in work we are doing for a book project, we have found that religion is consistently the strongest predictor of issue positions when compared to other factors like education, gender, sexual identity, age, geography and so on.
This is a problem for Democrats
On many issues that Trump and Republicans focused on during the 2024 campaign, secular voters hold attitudes that are far more extreme than the views of Black voters or pretty much any other demographic. The figure below includes several examples.
For example, just 16% of secular Democrats would require parental consent before minors could change their pronouns in school. In contrast, 62% of Black Democrats would require such permission. The views of Black Democrats are nearly identical to those of the electorate as a whole, where 2024 CES data show support at 64%.
On this issue, and many others, Black Democrats are simply much more in step with the American electorate. On average, the views of secular Democrats are twice as far away from the average voter than the views of Black Democrats. This is even true on issues that specifically have to do with race. For example, 48% of Black Democrats expressed support for the Supreme Court’s decision ending affirmative action, while only one-third of secular Democrats supported that decision.
Secular Democrats also tend to be politically active
The big challenge now for Democrats is that the secular left is starting to hold great sway over the party. Among voters for Harris in 2024, 18% were Black and 23% were non-Black secular voters, showing that secular Democrats now significantly outnumber Black Democrats.
But even this statistic belies the political weight that secular voters have built within the party. The reason for this is that secular Democrats are one of the most politically active groups in modern society.
In 2024, 27% of Democratic primary voters were secular voters. Secular Democrats were twice as likely as Black Democrats to report that they worked on a political campaign in 2024, and three times as likely to say that they donated money to political candidates. The secular wing of the party has not just become large, it is also so active that its influence outpaces even its growing size.
This shift goes beyond the college/no college divisions
This is not simply a story of educational attainment. It is true that secular voters are more educated than other voters – but more than half do not have a college degree. And Harris won two-thirds of the vote among secular voters who had a high school degree or less, yet did not even break 40% among non-secular voters with a high school degree or less.
Black Democrats do not simply disagree with secular voters on the issues, according to CES survey data. They also generally have a negative view of people who identify as atheist or agnostic. When given a 0 to 100 feeling thermometer scale, Black Democrats rated atheist and agnostic people as a 46 on average, decidedly on the negative end of the scale. In fact, that rating was only a few points higher than the average rating they gave to Republicans.
U.S. voting patterns now reflect the rise of the secular left
The secular/non-secular divisions are an emerging trend in CES data. Black support for Kamala Harris was lower in 2024 than it had been for any presidential candidate going back to at least 1980. For at least a half-century, Black voters have been the most loyal Democratic voters. But some Black voters are beginning to feel sufficiently unrepresented by the party that they are taking their support elsewhere.
In 2020, many credited the influence of Black voters in the South Carolina primary as having saved the party from nominating a candidate who would have been too liberal to easily beat Trump in the general election. Black voters are now very much the moderate wing of the party, holding issue positions that are advantageous to efforts to win over moderate swing voters.
But this moderation comes at a time when their influence over the party has arguably been surpassed by the ultra-liberal and highly engaged secular bloc. If Democrats are to take seriously the task of learning from their recent defeat, they will have to confront the challenge of doing this while juggling the demands of two increasingly disparate voting blocs.
Brian Schaffner is the Newhouse Professor of Civic Studies in the Department of Political Science and Tisch College at Tufts University. He also serves as a co-director for the Cooperative Election Study and is currently an Andrew Carnegie Fellow to support his book project with Stephen Ansolabehere on The American Mosaic.
Stephen Ansolabehere is Frank G. Thompson Professor of Government at Harvard University. He also serves as co-director of the Cooperative Election Study.
