The Seven Youngest States Are Red: The Political Ramifications of Religious Affiliation and Family Size

There’s a stereotype sometimes batted about concerning Republican voters—that they’re old, that they live in dying areas of the country, that demographic trends trend against them. It’s possible this last part is true. It’s possible there are kernels of truth in all parts of this. But something to keep in mind with all this that perhaps isn’t talked about enough is how many more children families of certain faiths have. In the Pew Research Center’s 2014 Religious Landscape Study, Pew found that while their full sample, weighted by demographic parameters, averaged a family size of 2.1 children, Evangelical families averaged 2.3 children, Catholic families averaged 2.3 children, and Mormon families averaged 3.4 children. To be fair, Historically Black Protestants—statistically, a group that votes heavily Democratic—averaged 2.5 children, but Mainline Protestants (think, generally of course, of your white NPR-listening New York Times readers: the non-Evangelicals among Methodists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Congregationalists, and Lutherans) averaged only 1.9 kids, with families of non-Christian faiths averaging 1.8 and religiously unaffiliated families averaging 1.7.

This is consequential not just for politics. While the number of Americans who are religiously unaffiliated is rising, it’s striking that those who are religiously unaffiliated aren’t having as many kids. For those who subscribe to the Tocquevillian school of thought that, while supporting the first amendment’s prohibition of a national religion, believe the moral proddings of religion to be helpful in a democratically governed country, and a greater number of religious people a good thing, this is encouraging. For those purely curious about the future course of religion, it’s noteworthy regardless of one’s feelings on Alexis de Tocqueville. Conservative religious groups (and I mean conservative theologically) are, on average, having more kids. Liberal religious groups are having fewer kids.

Politically, though, it’s consequential too, with Evangelicals heavily allied with the current iteration of the Republican Party, Mormon voters heavily Republican-leaning, and Catholic voters statistically a swing bloc which the Republican Party is courting with their platform on abortion. Even the Democratic-leaning bloc with the high birth rate—Historically Black Protestants—is a bloc that’s generally viewed as more socially conservative than the median Democratic Party voter.

Will this have consequences for future political outcomes? Undoubtedly. Yet we should hesitate to draw sweeping claims, as we don’t know what outcomes those will be, and this blog post isn’t looking at the plethora of other forces affecting both population and religion demographics. Still, viewing things strictly through the red state/blue state paradigm, and through the lens of the current political alignment, it’s striking to look at this list—the list of the youngest states (and districts) in the country, by median age. It comes from Stats America, which in turn cites the U.S. Census Bureau, and it’s labeled as the median age in 2019:

The seven youngest states (D.C. is not a state) voted for Donald Trump in 2020. Of the ten oldest states, only Florida and West Virginia voted for Trump. The average Trump-voting state ranks roughly 20^th in age. The average Biden-voting state (again, excluding D.C.) ranks roughly 31^st in age.

To be sure, this does not mean younger voters voted heavily for Trump. This is not true. But what it likely reflects is that Trump voters, on the average, are having more kids than Biden voters. Romney voters, on the average, are having more kids than Obama voters. Conservative religious groups are having more kids than liberal religious groups. This is not meaningless.