Melissa Deckman, Ph.D.
Robert P. Jones, Ph.D.
2 Authors
Over the past six decades, following the passage of the 1965 Civil Rights Act, white Christian voting patterns have undergone a sea change, with white Christians moving consistently away from the Democratic Party and toward the Republican Party. These shifts have dramatically changed the political dynamics in the country, the composition of the parties themselves, and have been a major contributor to increasing political polarization in an increasingly diverse nation.
This Spotlight Analysis, relying on time-series data from the American National Election Study, Cooperative Election Survey,[1] and PRRI data, shows how the voting patterns of the three largest subgroups of white Christians have evolved. White evangelical Protestants have become the most reliable Republican constituency in both presidential and congressional elections. White Catholics, once a solid part of the Democratic Party’s New Deal Coalition, have seen their share of Democratic voting drop significantly in recent decades. Once the most stalwart supporters of the pre-Civil Rights Era Republican Party establishment, white mainline/non-evangelical Protestants have become more divided in their support for Republican candidates at the presidential and congressional level—though majorities still tend to cast their ballots for Republican candidates.
In 1960, white Christian voters were evenly split in an election that saw John F. Kennedy, the first Catholic, elected to the White House, and in 1964, in the wake of Kennedy’s assassination, Democratic candidate Lyndon B. Johnson won the presidential election in a landslide, capturing a solid majority of the white Christian vote.
But as the chart above shows, those patterns shift dramatically in 1968. The passage of the 1965 Civil Rights Act triggered a massive white Christian flight from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party. Even at the time, President Johnson understood the likelihood that protecting the civil rights of African Americans would cost the Democratic Party white votes, especially white Christian votes in the South. On July 2, 1964, just a few hours after signing the Civil Rights Act, Johnson told his young press secretary Bill Moyers, a Southern Baptist from Texas, “Well, I think we may have lost the south for your lifetime— and mine.”
In 1968, more white Christians backed Richard Nixon than Democrat Hubert Humphrey—and Nixon’s share of the white Christian vote grew significantly from 54% to 72% in 1972. Republican support among white Christians decreased to 56% the following election in 1976, after the Watergate scandal that led to Nixon resigning the presidency in August 1974 and the emergence of Jimmy Carter, a Southern Baptist, as the Democratic Party nominee. Between Carter’s election and 1996, however, the Democratic share of the white Christian presidential vote has hovered at around 40%, and it has dropped further over the last three decades. In 2020 and 2024, only three in ten white Christian voters voted for Joe Biden or Kamala Harris, respectively.
Concurrently, Republican presidential candidates gained ground among white Christian voters beginning with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, except in 1992 and 1996, when independent but conservative-leaning candidate Ross Perot captured considerable shares of the vote—including among white Christians—in both elections. Since 2000, however, white Christian voters have steadily increased their support for Republican presidential candidates.
While the white Christian vote has shown some fluctuation at the presidential level since 1960, largely due to the presence of third-party candidates, its share of votes for Democratic House candidates has steadily declined since that time. In the 1960s, most white Southerners identified as Democrats and white Catholics remained a key voting bloc for the Democratic Party in state races, while white mainline Protestants largely identified with and voted for Republicans.
In the 1970s and 1980s, the white Christian vote in Congress fluctuated between Democratic and Republican candidates. Yet in 1994—the landslide election in which Republican House members, led by Newt Gingrich, took back control of the U.S. House of Representatives—63% of white Christians voted for House GOP candidates, compared with 48% in 1992. Since that time, solid majorities of white Christians have backed Republicans. The party shift is even clearer with regard to the Democratic Party. In 1964, 62% of white Christians cast their ballots for House Democrats. But by 2024, just 38% of white Christians voted for Democratic House candidates.
In 1960, just 39% of white evangelical Protestants voted for Catholic John F. Kennedy, though nearly two in three voted for Democrat Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964. In 1968, just one in four white evangelicals voted for Democrat Hubert Humphrey, while another one in four voted for independent candidate Alabama Governor George Wallace, who ran on a segregationist platform in response to the passage of the historic Civil Rights Act in 1964. (Wallace won five Deep South states in the 1968 Electoral College.) With one exception—when white evangelicals voted 46% for Jimmy Carter, one of their own, in 1976—there has been a steady decline in white evangelical support for Democratic candidates since 1964. And this decline has accelerated over the last three decades, from 33% in 1996 to only 14% in 2024.
In 1972, support for white evangelical Protestants for Richard Nixon reached 81%, though it declined precipitously to 54% in 1976 in the wake of the Watergate scandal and the candidacy of the nation’s first self-proclaimed born-again Christian, Democrat Jimmy Carter. Since Reagan’s election in 1980, however, white evangelical support for Republican presidential candidates has steadily increased. Over seven in ten white evangelical Protestants (73%) voted Republican in 1984, as they did in 1988 (71%). Although Republican support dropped to about 55% in 1992 and 1996—diluted by the Perot candidacy—it went back up to 70% in 2000. Since then, Republican presidential support among white evangelical Protestants has reached even higher levels. Nearly eight in ten white evangelicals voted Republican in 2008 (76%) and 2012 (79%). Since Trump was elected in 2016, support has hovered over eight in ten, reaching 84% in 2024.
The steady white evangelical flight from the Democratic to the Republican Party can be seen even more clearly in the congressional vote data. Support among white evangelical Protestants for Democratic House candidates has steadily and precipitously declined since the early 1960s, though Democrats still retained a majority of their support through the 1960s and 1970s. While Ronald Reagan performed extremely well with white evangelical voters in both the 1980 and 1984 presidential elections, half of white evangelical Protestants voted for House Democrats in 1980 and 59% in 1984. Given the long-term dominance of the Democratic Party in the South following the Civil War, many white Southerners, where white evangelical Protestants have a stronghold, continued to identify as Democrats for most of the 20th century even as their presidential voting behavior shifted toward Republican candidates after Reagan’s election. As congressional incumbents typically are re-elected, it wasn’t until the 1990s that white evangelicals began to vote in earnest for Republican House candidates. Following Barack Obama’s election in 2008, just about one in five white evangelicals have backed Democratic House candidates.
Historically, white Catholics have been more politically divided in their presidential support than other white Christian groups. John F. Kennedy amassed historic support among white Catholics, with 83% voting for the nation’s first Catholic president in 1960; Johnson also performed strongly in 1964, capturing 78% of the white Catholic vote. Richard Nixon managed to secure just 37% of the white Catholic vote in 1968, but he performed far better among white Catholics in 1972, winning six in ten of their votes. After hovering around 50% during the 1980s, Republican support dropped to a low of 31% in 1992, as Ross Perot secured roughly 23% of the white Catholic vote. In 1996, half of white Catholics voted for Bill Clinton.
Since 2000, white Catholics have generally leaned Republican when voting for President: slim majorities voted Republican in 2000 (54%), 2008 (54%), and 2012 (53%), while the vote was evenly divided in 2004 (50%). Data over the last decade demonstrates that white Catholics have been particularly drawn to support President Donald Trump. Republican support rose to 60% in 2016, when Donald Trump was first elected, and remained at similar levels in 2020 (58%) and 2024 (61%). By contrast, Joe Biden, a lifelong Catholic, received only 39% of the white Catholic vote, and Kamala Harris received only 37%.
Compared to white evangelical Protestants, white Catholics remained far more likely to support Democratic House candidates well into the 1990s. Indeed, white Catholics remained a reliable constituency for congressional Democratic candidates from 1960 through 1992, when Bill Clinton was first elected president. Notably, the share of white Catholics voting Republican increased from 42% in 1992 to 57% in 1994, when Republicans took back control of Congress. However, unlike white evangelicals, a majority of the white Catholic vote fluctuated between House Democrats and Republicans until 2010, when 61% of white Catholics voted for House Republicans—a level that has held steady since that time.
White Christians from the mainline Protestant tradition have historically been a strong Republican constituency throughout most of the 20th century, remaining with the GOP even as its platforms and composition shifted in the wake of the passage of the Civil Rights Acts. Indeed, 68% of white mainline/non-evangelical Protestants voted for Richard Nixon in 1960, though such support dropped to 46% in 1964 for Republican Barry Goldwater, viewed as an extreme candidate who refused to disavow the use of nuclear weapons during the Cold War amid a landslide election against Lyndon B. Johnson. Majorities of white mainline/non-evangelical Protestants continued to support Republican presidential candidates until the 1992 election, when their votes were split between Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush, with Perot taking 24% of their vote. Similarly, such voters were divided in the 1996 re-election of Clinton. Since 2000, white mainline/non-evangelical Protestants have remained more closely divided than their evangelical or white Catholic counterparts. About half voted Republican in both 2000 (51%) and 2008 (51%). Support increased to 59% for Mitt Romney in 2012 before declining slightly to 55% in both 2016 and 2020 for Donald Trump. In 2024, white mainline/non-evangelical Protestant support for Donald Trump increased to 59%.
Since 1960, with some notable exceptions, white mainline/non-evangelical Protestants have been more likely to vote for Republican House candidates. Democratic support from 1968 through 1986 ranged from 39% to 49%. By 1988, however, Democratic House candidates began performing slightly better with this group, a trend that held through the late 1990s. Since that time, white mainline/non-evangelical Protestants have shown greater fluctuation in their congressional vote choice than white evangelical Protestants, whose allegiance to the Republican Party has grown much stronger.
[1] To examine religious affiliation over time, we standardized the ANES time series and Cooperative Election Survey religion measures across survey years. Because the wording, response categories, and coding of religious affiliation differ across election years, we recoded the available religion variables into a shared set of categories that could be applied consistently across the full-time series. We use the standardized ANES data for the historical analysis and PRRI survey data to report results for the two most recent presidential elections, 2020 and 2024.
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