WaPo | Has the Republican big tent evolved into a house of worship?
For several years, the two major parties have been moving gradually
toward opposite poles: Democrats growing more liberal and secular,
Republicans becoming more conservative and religious. But a survey out
this week shows just how far and how fast the GOP has gone toward
becoming a collection of older, white, evangelical Christians defined as
much by religion as by politics.
The nonpartisan Pew Research Center recently released the results of an extensive poll
done in 2013 on Americans’ views of evolution. Like other polls, it
shows that overall views are stable: Sixty percent believe that humans
have evolved over time, the same as said so in 2009.
But within
those results, there was a huge shift in the beliefs of Republicans: 48
percent say that humans have existed in our present form from the
beginning, compared with 43 percent who say we have evolved, either with
or without help from a supreme being. That’s an 11-percentage-point
swing from just four years ago, when 54 percent believed in evolution.
Forget climate-change skepticism: Republicans have turned, suddenly and sharply, against Darwin.
How to explain this most unexpected mutation? Given the stability of views on evolution (Gallup polling
has found responses essentially the same over the past
quarter-century), it’s unlikely that large numbers of Republicans
actually changed their beliefs. More likely is that the type of people
willing to identify themselves as Republicans increasingly tend to be a
narrow group of conservatives who believe in a literal interpretation of
the Bible — or partisans who regard evolution as a political question
rather than one of science.
The Pew poll also found that the
share of Republicans who attend worship services weekly or more is 52
percent, up five points from 2009, and that the proportion who
self-identify as conservative is 71 percent, up six percentage points
from 2009. The party remains overwhelmingly white, at 86 percent, and
the number of those ages 50 to 64 and 65 and older climbed seven points
and two points, respectively.
