New U.S. Religion Census just dropped
Discover more from The Intersection
New U.S. Religion Census just dropped
The decline of Latino Catholics, ancestry coalitions in Wisconsin, how the Southwest votes, U.S. views on China, and who the worst drivers in the D.C. metro are
No. 262 | April 14th, 2023
👫 Demographics
Among U.S. Latinos, Catholicism Continues to Decline but Is Still the Largest Faith (Pew Research Center)
“Catholics remain the largest religious group among Latinos in the United States, even as their share among Latino adults has steadily declined over the past decade, according to a new analysis of Pew Research Center surveys. By contrast, the share of Latinos who identify as Protestants – including evangelical Protestants – has been relatively stable, while the percentage who are religiously unaffiliated has grown substantially over the same period.
As of 2022, 43% of Hispanic adults identify as Catholic, down from 67% in 2010. Even so, Latinos remain about twice as likely as U.S. adults overall to identify as Catholic, and considerably less likely to be Protestant. Meanwhile, the share of Latinos who are religiously unaffiliated (describing themselves as atheist, agnostic or ‘nothing in particular’) now stands at 30%, up from 10% in 2010 and from 18% a decade ago in 2013. The share of Latinos who are religiously unaffiliated is on par with U.S. adults overall.”
Jeff Diamant, Rebecca Leppert: Why the U.S. census doesn’t ask Americans about their religion (Pew Research Center)
“Census forms in the United States don’t ask about religion, but relatively few U.S. adults (25%) know this, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted shortly before census forms were mailed out in 2020.
Indeed, while the Census Bureau has long collected troves of data on Americans’ income, employment, race, ethnicity, housing and other things, the decennial census, held since 1790, has never directly asked Americans about their religion.
That’s not to say the census hasn’t gathered data about Americans’ faith backgrounds through other means from time to time. This analysis answers some basic questions about the often-debated place of religion in the census throughout much of U.S. history.”
Hansi Lo Wang: Did the last census overcount Asian Americans? It depends on where you look (NPR)
“A new report is complicating an unusual finding from the U.S. Census Bureau's own report card on the accuracy of its 2020 headcount of the country's population: a national overcount of Asian Americans.
The tallying of U.S. residents more than once at different addresses drives overcounting in census results, which — despite their flaws — are used to determine political representation, guide federal funding and inform policymaking and research across the United States.
The bureau estimates it had a net overcount rate of 2.62% for Asian Americans in the last census. That marked the first time Asian Americans had a statistically significant overcount at the national level since the bureau started trying to measure how well it tallied the country's Asian population, along with other racial groups, more than three decades ago.”
In a Growing Share of U.S. Marriages, Husbands and Wives Earn About the Same (Pew Research Center)
“Even when earnings are similar, husbands spend more time on paid work and leisure, while wives devote more time to caregiving and housework.
Among married couples in the United States, women’s financial contributions have grown steadily over the last half century. While men remain the main breadwinner in a majority of opposite-sex marriages, the share of women who earn as much as or significantly more than their husband has roughly tripled over the past 50 years.”
🗳️ Elections
Modeling the Modern Era’s Congressional Environments (Split Ticket)
“Last year, Split Ticket reviewed House-level election results for the 2020 and 2022 cycles and developed a metric to quantify what a ‘generic ballot’ election result would have looked like. In such an election, every voter is presented with at least a Republican and a Democrat on the ballot at the House level.
While it would be simple to add up all the votes Democratic and Republican candidates received, this often glosses over the fact that in some congressional districts, voters do not have the choice of picking between both parties, whether due to uncontested races, jungle-primary lockouts, or failure to qualify for the ballot in a district. In all three cases, voters are not presented with the question pollsters give to determine a ‘generic ballot’: whether voters intend to vote for a Republican or Democratic representative in Congress. Split Ticket’s SHAVE (Substitutional House Aggregated Vote Estimate) model resolves this issue by substituting uncontested district results with a modeled result of how a district with a bipartisan presence would have voted.”
Kyle Kondik: How the Other Half Votes: The Southwest (Sabato’s Crystal Ball)
“We’re applying our top half/bottom half presidential voting analysis to 5 key states in the Southwest: Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Texas. As recently as 2004, George W. Bush carried all 5 of these states, but there’s been a Democratic trend in the region more broadly in the years since, with Colorado, Nevada, and New Mexico voting Democratic in each of the last 4 elections, and traditionally Republican Arizona flipping to Joe Biden in 2020. Meanwhile, the megastate Texas — which now has 40 electoral votes — is showing signs of becoming markedly more competitive even as it is still clearly positioned to the right of the nation.”
🔬 Academia
📊 Polling & Public Attitudes
Americans Are Critical of China’s Global Role – as Well as Its Relationship With Russia (Pew Research Center)
“A large majority of U.S. adults (83%) continue to have negative views of China, and the share who have very unfavorable views (44%) has increased by 4 percentage points since last year. Around four-in-ten Americans also now describe China as an enemy of the United States, rather than as a competitor or a partner – up 13 points since last year, according to a March 20-26, 2023, Pew Research Center survey.
People are broadly concerned about China’s role in the world, both geopolitically and in terms of specific issues. For example, in the wake of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s recent visit to Moscow to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin, 62% of Americans see the China-Russia partnership as a very serious problem for the U.S., up 5 points since October and back to the original high levels seen in the immediate aftermath of the Ukraine invasion in 2022.”
Where are the worst drivers, best restaurants in the D.C. area? The poll data are in. (The Washington Post)
“Millions of opinionated Washington-area residents, scattered over two states and a capital city, have plenty in common: The majestic Potomac River. The hollowed-out Nationals. Powerlessness before muggy swarms of mosquitoes.
Yet in a region diced by jurisdictional lines and riven with a Maryland-Virginia faceoff over hosting a new FBI headquarters, other major disagreements remain. None more, perhaps, than over the age-old conundrum: Which slice of the Washington region has the most atrocious drivers?
A Washington Post-George Mason University Schar School poll set about trying to shed light on that question and a handful of others, including whether Northern Virginia, the District or its Maryland suburbs have the best restaurants, schools, shopping or parks. The results reveal stubborn geographic pride — as well as moments of self-reflection over sometimes uneasy comparisons.”
Nathaniel Rakich: Americans Disagree On The Definition Of Art (FiveThirtyEight)
“What is art? According to the Russian writer Leo Tolstoy, the activity of art is ‘to evoke in oneself a feeling one has once experienced, and having evoked it in oneself, then, by means of movements, lines, colors, sounds, or forms expressed in words, so to transmit that feeling that others may experience the same feeling.’ But, according to a new poll, many Americans believe art is just old paintings and sculptures they couldn’t make themselves.
Two weeks ago, YouGov showed 1,000 U.S. adult citizens pictures of famous art pieces and asked them questions about the works specifically and their views on art generally. It was a creative use of YouGov’s online polling methodology (after all, you can’t show pictures of art to respondents of a traditional phone poll) and revealed a lot about Americans’ artistic tastes.”
🗺️ Data Visualization
u/gammafission00: The Highs and Lows of Popular Comedy Shows (Reddit)
😂 Humor
@EmGusk: Omg bad survey design! (Twitter)
