A number of people have said that religion and politics are substitutes--when people lose faith in religion, they turn to politics for a sense of meaning. More specifically, they turn to extremist politics. I was reminded of that this morning when David Brooks gave his list of the best essays of the year, which included one by Andrew Sullivan that appeared a few weeks ago. He says that religious faith is declining in America, and as a result:
". . . what happens is illiberal politics. The need for meaning hasn’t gone away, but without Christianity, this yearning looks to politics for satisfaction. And religious impulses, once anchored in and tamed by Christianity, find expression in various political cults. . . like almost all new cultish impulses, they demand a total and immediate commitment to save the world."
"Now look at our politics. We have the cult of Trump on the right, a demigod who, among his worshippers, can do no wrong. And we have the cult of social justice on the left . . . . They are filling the void that Christianity once owned, without any of the wisdom and culture and restraint that Christianity once provided."
The logic of the idea that a decline of religious faith leads to an increase in political fanaticism doesn't seem convincing to me. But I'll focus on something where you can get data--does Trump have an unusually enthusiastic "base"? Since the early 1950s, the Gallup Poll has asked people to rate various people and things on a scale of -5 to 5 (with no zero). The question initially talked about "like very much" and "dislike very much," but during the 1980s and 1990s switched to "very favorable opinion" and "very unfavorable opinion." (I didn't compare systematically, but it didn't seem like the change in question wording affected ratings). They have asked it about the major party presidential candidates shortly before every election starting in 1956, except 1996 and 2000. In 2016, Donald Trump set a record for the largest number of unfavorable ratings, and Hillary Clinton also broke the previous record, which was held by Barry Goldwater in 1964. The figure shows the percent favorable minus unfavorable ratings. There was a downward trend from 1956 to 2012, and then a substantial drop in 2016.
But what about the intensity of Trump's support? 11 percent gave him a plus five. That was the same as Hillary Clinton, and worse than Mitt Romney in 2012 (15%). In fact, it was the lowest ever except for Goldwater (10%). Maybe Trump has a larger core of truly fanatical supporters than previous candidates, but they are not a large share of the people who voted for him.
There is also a change that doesn't show up in the figures above, which can be seen by considering the 2008 election. Barack Obama had 62% favorable and 35% unfavorable, just about the same as Ronald Reagan in 1980. Obama had more +5 ratings than Reagan (23% to 14%) but also more -5 (18% to 13%). McCain had 12 percent +5 and 16% -5, which were exactly the same as what George McGovern got in 1972, even though McGovern was considerably worse in terms of the overall balance of positive and negative ratings.
The point is that the number of +5 ratings has been declining and the number of -5 ratings has been increasing even more than you would expect from the balance of positives and negatives. Obama's 23% of +5 ratings was the highest since Reagan in 1984--but well below what most candidates got into the 1970s--even Adlai Stevenson got a +5 rating from 23%. And in 2012, 20% gave Obama a -5, almost equal to Barry Goldwater in 1964 (21%).
So what is rising is not enthusiastic support for one's own side, but strong dislike or fear of the other side.
[Data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research]
Don't you need to include a rating of religiousness to evaluate the claim? Either for each respondent or a general trend in society at large?
ReplyDeleteI'm also a bit sceptical of treating religion as unpolitical.
I'm not really trying to evaluate the general claim that politics is a substitute for religion, which would be difficult. My question is whether you need any special explanation for support for Trump, as Sullivan assumes, or if it's just more of what we've had before: Republicans like him because Democrats don't.
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