Group identities and politics in the United States -- Putting things in context: religious and political attachments over time -- A life-cycle theory of religion and politics -- Tracking religious trajectories over a lifetime -- Partisans' religious responses to the political environment -- The religious and political consequences of political knowledge -- Faithful partisans: a closer look at African Americans -- Generalizing the life-cycle theory: a reevaluation of the 1960 election -- The religious sort
Public opinion research often identifies evangelical Christians based on a double-barreled, yes-or-no, question asking respondents whether they are an evangelical or born-again Christian. This paper uses a survey experiment to demonstrate the implications of this measurement strategy. Among White Americans, more than one-third of those whom researchers classify as evangelical using the standard double-barreled question actually eschew the evangelical label; the same is true for just under two-thirds of African Americans. Additionally, these born-again non-evangelical Christians hold less conservative political outlooks compared to the self-identified evangelicals with whom they are grouped, and, in fact, oftentimes more closely resemble those who reject both the evangelical and born-again labels. Despite this, the double-barreled identification question produces a White "evangelical or born-again" group that looks politically similar to a composite "evangelical" or "born-again" group based on two questions asking about each identity separately. Finally, important differences appear across race, suggesting that religious and political histories affect how people interpret and respond to double-barreled questions.
Decades of research has explored the political consequences of religious identities, practices, and beliefs. This article describes new research that has reversed the causal arrow to look at the religious consequences of partisanship and political outlooks. The first part of the article describes the current religious‐political landscape, in which religious Americans are more likely to be Republicans and less religious Americans are more likely to be Democrats. The article then goes on to introduce key theories and findings explaining how politics helped produce this religiosity gap. After discussing avenues for future research in this area, the article switches gears to describe other ways politics can shape religious choices, including pushing evangelical Republicans out of churches and encouraging short‐term fluctuations in religious engagement. The article concludes with a brief discussion of how the study of religion and politics is fundamentally different on account of politics' ability to both shape and be shaped by religion.
AbstractWhite evangelicals overwhelmingly supported Donald Trump in the 2016 election, producing extensive debate as to who evangelicals are, what it means to be an evangelical in the United States today, and whether the electoral results are surprising or not. This paper offers empirical clarity to this protracted discussion by asking and answering a series of questions related to Trump's victory in general and his support from white evangelicals in particular. In doing so, the analyses show that the term "evangelical" has not become a synonym for conservative politics and that white evangelical support for Trump would behigherif public opinion scholars used a belief-centered definition of evangelicalism rather than relying on the more common classification strategies based on self-identification or religious denomination. These findings go against claims thatnominalevangelicals, those who call themselves evangelicals but are not religious, make up the core of Trump's support base. Moreover, strong electoral support among devout evangelicals is not unique to the 2016 election but rather is part of a broader trend of evangelical electoral behavior, even when faced with non-traditional Republican candidates. Finally, the paper explores why white evangelicals might support a candidate like Trump. The paper presents evidence that negative partisanship helps explain why devout evangelicals—despite Trump's background and behaviors being cause for concern—coalesced around his presidential bid. Together, the findings from this paper help make sense of both the 2016 presidential election and evangelical public opinion, both separately and together.
Good survey and experimental research requires subjects to pay attention to questions and treatments, but many subjects do not. In this article, we discuss 'Screeners' as a potential solution to this problem. We first demonstrate Screeners' power to reveal inattentive respondents and reduce noise. We then examine important but understudied questions about Screeners. We show that using a single Screener is not the most effective way to improve data quality. Instead, we recommend using multiple items to measure attention. We also show that Screener passage correlates with politically relevant characteristics, which limits the generalizability of studies that exclude failers. We conclude that attention is best measured using multiple Screener questions and that studies using Screeners can balance the goals of internal and external validity by presenting results conditional on different levels of attention. Adapted from the source document.
Inattentive respondents introduce noise into data sets, weakening correlations between items and increasing the likelihood of null findings. "Screeners" have been proposed as a way to identify inattentive respondents, but questions remain regarding their implementation. First, what is the optimal number of Screeners for identifying inattentive respondents? Second, what types of Screener questions best capture inattention? In this paper, we address both of these questions. Using item-response theory to aggregate individual Screeners we find that four Screeners are sufficient to identify inattentive respondents. Moreover, two grid and two multiple choice questions work well. Our findings have relevance for applied survey research in political science and other disciplines. Most importantly, our recommendations enable the standardization of Screeners on future surveys.
