Survey analysis: Age biggest factor between Nones, FFRF members
By Ryan P. Burge
In May of last year, Tom Edsall, a columnist at the New York Times, asked me a question that I had never thought about before: Given the rise of the Nones, why aren’t Democrats winning most elections?
I mean, it’s a really obvious query and I am kind of ashamed that it hadn’t crossed my mind at least once before that moment. The Nones were 5 percent of the United States in 1972. They are now about 30 percent of the population. They are overwhelmingly voting for Kamala Harris in 2024. They are a very reliable voting bloc for the Democrats. Yet, Trump might very well win the 2024 election.
There are several different reasons why this is the case, but there’s one possible explanation that was looming in my head that I just couldn’t answer very well with the data that I had at the time.
The Nones just aren’t a coherent “thing” like Catholics or evangelicals. They are united by what they are not. They don’t have regular worship services. I think it’s fair to say that there isn’t a dominant worldview among the nonreligious. They are a herd of cats, to put it bluntly. And that weakens their political power.
But, now, because of a collaboration between the Freedom From Religion Foundation, Paul Djupe and myself, we can have an unprecedented view into the differences in organized Nones vs. Nones in general.
Here’s what we did. We conducted a survey of nonreligious Americans using the Qualtrics platform and got about 2,400 responses. The only thing as atheist, agnostic or claimed no religion in particular. We also conducted a survey of members from the Freedom From Religion Foundation. The response rate was incredible — we collected over 11,400 responses.
We asked a bunch of the same questions in both surveys, which means we can now understand how organized Nones look compared to those who were non-religious but not part of any formal organization like FFRF.
Let’s get to it.
Both samples were asked a series of questions about the household that they grew up in. People who are currently non-religious are more likely to have a non-religious father than a non-religious mother. Here’s what really jumps out at me: FFRF members are much more likely to have grown up with a religious mother or a religious father compared to the random sample of Nones that we collected.
That’s especially true when looking at the question about siblings. In the random sample of Nones, about half of them said that they had at least one sibling who was nonreligious. That was 20 percentage points higher than the FFRF sample. It looks like FFRF folks grew up in much more religious households than unorganized Nones. Hold that thought for a minute, I will circle back to it.
We also asked them about the process of leaving religion — was it a slow or quick one? (See chart on Page 1)
Among the Qualtrics sample of nonreligious folks, 72 percent said that their departure from faith was somewhat quick or very quick. Among the FFRF members, that share was significantly lower (61 percent). I don’t know if I would have guessed that before I actually did the analysis.
That got me thinking through what factors could lead to these two results. After poking around the demographics of the two samples, I hit absolute paydirt. This is the biggest upshot for me from this project: Members of the Freedom of Religion Foundation are significantly older than the average non-religious person in the general population. The average adult None in our sample is 47.6 years old. The average member of FFRF is 67.6 years old.
In our random sample of the Nones, over half of them had not seen their 45th birthday. About 16 percent were between the ages of 18 and 29 years old. Another 36 percent were between 30 and 44 years old. In comparison, only about 1 percent of the members of FFRF are in that lowest age bracket and just 6 percent are 30-44 years old.
Nearly half of the members of FFRF are between the ages of 60 and 74 years old (46 percent). That’s double the rate found in the random sample of the Nones. And, three in 10 members who filled out the FFRF survey have celebrated their 70th birthday compared, to only 6 percent of the folks in the random sample.
This is why the FFRF folks are so much different than the other Nones when it comes to questions about religious upbringing — 75 percent of them were born before 1965, when the United States was almost entirely Christian.
How about why they left religion?
As you can tell by just glancing at the graph at the bottom of this page, the FFRF folks were much more likely to check a lot of boxes compared to the random sample of Nones. There’s not a single reason that was clearly chosen more by the Qualtrics sample compared to the membership of FFRF. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t learn some things about these two groups from this data.
It’s notable that there wasn’t a huge gap on religious hypocrisy between the two groups (55 percent vs. 42 percent). But there were other reasons that were much more compelling for the FFRF crowd. For instance, members of the organization were twice as likely to say that “religion doesn’t make sense,” compared to the Qualtrics sample (61 percent vs. 35 percent). They were nearly three times more likely to say that reading the bible led them away from religion, too (24 percent vs. 9 percent). And they were 4.5 times more likely to say that “reading skeptical authors” was a cause for them to leave religion.
We also included a series of questions about the amount of stigma and social isolation that they feel because of being non-religious. (See chart at top of this page.)
It’s striking here that the members of FFRF are 50 percent more likely to agree that “I am wary of letting others know I reject religion,” compared to Nones as a whole. I would have assumed that being members of FFRF meant that they were open about their religious status, but the data points to the opposite conclusion. Additionally, 35 percent of FFRF folks said that they often felt like they were the only nonreligious person in their area, compared to just 23 percent in the random sample.
Before I move on, I have to point out the results of that last question: “The opinions and values of the nonreligious are respected in society.” The gap between the two samples is huge. While among the random sample of Nones, 45 percent of them agree with that statement, while just 15 percent of FFRF members agree. Again, this may have something to do with age, but it also seems like that folks join an organization like FFRF precisely because they want to see their views to get a louder hearing in the public square.
Our unprecedented surveys of FFRF members and unaffiliated Nones have revealed striking differences between organized and unorganized nonreligious individuals in America.
These findings have important implications for understanding the political landscape of nonreligious Americans. While the Nones have grown to represent nearly a third of the U.S. population and tend to support Democratic candidates, their lack of cohesion as a group may indeed be limiting their political influence. FFRF, with its older and more organized membership, represents a small but potentially influential subset of Nones who are more likely to speak out about their views, despite feeling greater stigma.
As we approach the 2024 election, these insights into the diversity within the nonreligious population could be crucial. The challenge for political strategists and social scientists will be to understand how to engage with both the older, more organized Nones, and the younger, less cohesive majority.
The rise of the Nones is undoubtedly one of the most significant shifts in American religious and political life in recent decades. As their numbers continue to grow, particularly among younger generations, organizations like FFRF may play an increasingly important role in mobilizing this diverse group. However, the question remains: Will the Nones ever become a unified political force, or will their diversity continue to be both their strength and their limitation in the political arena?
Ryan P. Burge is an associate professor at Eastern Illinois University, political scientist, statistician and former Baptist minister.
