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This article uses surveys of the parties' national convention delegates from 1972 to 1992 to examine the emergence of a religious cleavage between Republican and Democratic activists. The findings indicate that the religious cleavage between the two parties has grown over time, with the Republicans becoming more traditionally religious and with the Democrats growing more secular and religiously modern. This religious polarization has been associated with a growing partisan polarization on "cultural" issues such as abortion, women's rights, and homosexual rights. Finally, the article demonstrates that the impact of religious change within the parties on interparty differences on cultural issues has been even broader than a model focusing only on religious replacement would predict. Not only is religious replacement within the parties occurring, but within religious groups, Democratic activists are becoming more culturally liberal relative to Republican activists.

Examines the emergence of a religious cleavage between Republicans and Democratic activists; suggests that religious polarization is associated with a growing partisan polarization on cultural issues, such as abortion, women's rights, and homosexual rights, 1972-1992; US.

Examines political differences among Catholics, Protestants, Jews, and secularists, and between Protestants who are religious conservatives and those who are religious liberals; based on National Election Studies; US.

Social science has established that political parties have been indispensable to American democracy and their most active members as keepers of the democratic flame. The aftermath of the 2020 presidential election raised questions about the role of the parties in protecting democracy, particularly the fundamental democratic norm of "loser's consent." We argue that recent political developments—close elections, ideological polarization, participatory party nominations, and changes in campaign finance and media—have worked to undermine the parties' commitment to loser's consent. We use recent survey data to show that party activists no longer demonstrate greater commitment than do ordinary citizens to democratic norms—especially to loser's consent. We also examine how parties and voters responded to the post-2020 crisis of democratic legitimacy, finding that both parties prioritized their political interests over democratic health. However, a small number of voters did deviate from normal partisanship and helped to shore up American democracy in the 2022 elections.

AbstractPrior work has shown party activists and religious divisions to be two of the leading causes of party polarization in American politics. Using the Convention Delegate Studies, we examine the interaction between these two culprits and their impact on party polarization. We leverage a novel measure of secularism in the latest wave of the Convention Delegate Studies to demonstrate that active secularism is distinct both conceptually and statistically from low religiosity. Furthermore, we show that both religiosity and secularism drive party activists to take more extreme policy positions, to identify themselves as more ideologically extreme, and to exhibit less support for compromise. As the Democratic and Republican Parties have become more secular and religious, respectively, these results suggest religious polarization may compound existing divisions between the two parties and exacerbate the partisan divide in American politics.