Outside an organized religion, ‘the nones’ are still powerful voting bloc

http://firstread.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/12/12/15868598-outside-an-organized-religion-the-nones-are-still-powerful-voting-bloc?lite


Larry Downing / Reuters
President Barack Obama acknowledges supporters while addressing his election night victory rally in Chicago, November 6, 2012.

By Carrie Dann, NBC News

It's a voting bloc as big as Hispanics, 18- to 24-year-olds and the staunchest pro-lifers, and it broke for the Democratic presidential nominee by a margin of 44 points.
"Religiously Unaffiliated Voters For Obama" doesn't really have a bumper-sticker catchiness to it, but it rang true in 2012.

Voters who say they don't have a specific affiliation with a particular religion -- increasingly referred to with the minimalist moniker "the nones" -- made up 12 percent of the electorate in 2012 and 2008, a share that has more than doubled since 1980 and is up by 3 percent since 2000. Even more, 17 percent of 2012 voters said they never attend church.

"This is a big group, it's a growing group, and it's politically a pretty important and consequential group in that the religiously unaffiliated are one of the strongest Democratic constituencies in the population," said Greg Smith, senior researcher at the Pew Research Center's Forum on Religion and Public Life.

And there are many more who haven't shown up to the polls. In a new study, Pew found that in 2012, nearly one in five survey respondents nationwide classified themselves as "atheist," "agnostic" or "nothing in particular."

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