The Latinx Religious Red Surge?

In the study of Latinx politics and the shift of Latinxs to the right, some members of the scholarly community and media have turned to religion to explain why a significant number of Latinxs affiliate themselves with the Republican party, hold a conservative ideology, and/or vote for Trump. The turn to religion makes sense since social scientists have established the significance of religion’s role in shaping Latinx partisanship. As someone interested in the study of religion and politics within the U.S. Latinx community, I explore religion’s role in shaping Latinx partisanship to explain this contemporary shift of Latinxs to the right. I do so by asking: how do religion and religiosity explain the recent variation in Latinxs’ affiliation with the Republican party and identification with a conservative political ideology?

My research is motivated by the fact that, over the last few presidential elections, much of the media attention on Latinx religion and partisanship has been focused on the Catholic-Protestant (specifically evangelical) political divide among Latinxs (Alexander and Doña-Reveco 2022; Jackson 2020; Kloppe-Santamaría and Young 2025). The Catholic-Evangelical Protestant divide stems from the belief that many Latinx will continue to leave the Catholic Church for Protestantism at high numbers, predicting that by 2030, half of the U.S. Latinx population will be Protestant (Mulder, Ramos, and Marti 2017). However, is this division enough to explain Latinxs’ shift to the right?

Even though it is true that Latinxs have continued to move away from the Catholic Church over the last decade, this movement has not benefited the Protestant community. According to the Pew Research Center, from 2010 to 2022, the share of Latinx Catholics dropped from 67% to 43%, Protestants (both mainline and evangelical) grew from 17% to 21%, and the religiously unaffiliated grew from 10% to 30% (Krogstad, Alvarado, and Mohamed 2023). Instead of focusing on a Catholic-Protestant political divide, these changes in religious demographics of the Latinx community signify that we should perhaps consider a religious/secular political divide, something scholars of religion and politics have been raising awareness of recently among the general U.S. population (D. Campbell 2020; D. E. Campbell, Layman, and Green 2020).

What We Know on Latinx Religion & Partisanship

Previous scholarly work has found that there is a significant split between Latinx Catholics and Protestants (both evangelical and mainline), where Latinx Protestants are more likely to support the Republican Party than their non-Protestant counterparts (Kelly and Kelly 2005; Kelly and Morgan 2008; Lee and Pachon 2007). This split manifests itself in public policy preferences as well, where Latinx Protestants are more likely to be against abortion and same-sex marriage than their Catholic and unaffiliated counterparts (Bartkowski et al. 2012; Ellison, Acevedo, and Ramos-Wada 2011). Lastly, recent work from Martinez and Martí (2024) found that this religious divide continued in the 2020 U.S. presidential election, where Latinx evangelical Protestants were more likely than their non-evangelical counterparts to vote for President Donald Trump.

In addition to differences across religious affiliation, levels of religiosity, such as religious service attendance and the importance of religion in an individual’s life, also have effects on Latinx partisanship. Kelly and Morgan (2008) find that religiosity among Latinxs is associated with a higher identification with a conservative ideology regardless of religious affiliation. This finding has led Republican strategists to believe they can use religious appeals to gain votes among Latinxs (de la Garza and Cortina 2007). However, other scholars have countered these findings by showing that religiosity can have a dual effect, making Latinx Protestants more likely to be conservative and Latino Catholics and the religiously unaffiliated more likely to be liberal (Gibson and Hare 2012; Valenzuela 2014).

Overall, there is still much left to explore in the relationship between religion and partisanship among the U.S. Latinx community. It is also important to recognize that this work must be analyzed on a regular basis due to the changing dynamics of the Latinx community’s religious demographics, as well as the U.S. political landscape. Each election cycle is a moment in time that produces its unique results on Latinx partisanship; therefore, we must analyze each one and consider how past theories hold true or are challenged.

Data and Methods

To explore the contemporary relationship between religion and Latinx partisanship, I use data from the 2020 Cooperative Election Study (CES), which has a sample of 6,978 Latinx respondents (Ansolabehere, Schaffner, and Luks 2021). For this project, I used statistical methods to predict the probabilities of respondents affiliating with the Republican party or a conservative ideology based on different categories of religious affiliation, religious service attendance, and the importance of religion.[1]

For political party affiliation, 41.47% of the sample was affiliated with the Democratic Party, 18.2% with the Republican Party, and 29.76% were independent or affiliated with another party. For political ideology, 21.69% of the sample identified with a conservative ideology, 32.38% with a liberal ideology, and 34.09% with a moderate ideology.

In regards to religious affiliation, 36.7% of the sample identified as Catholic, 11.59% as Evangelical Protestant, 34.08% with no religion, and 24.89% with other religions. A majority of the sample, 66.28%, attended a religious service a few times a year or less, while 30.04% attended a religious service once or twice a month or more. Lastly, 36.75% of respondents said religion was not at all or not too important in their lives, while 63.2% said religion was somewhat or very important.

Results

Conservative ideology

Based on the results from the models predicting the likelihood of Latinx respondents holding a conservative ideology, I found that measures of religion and religiosity (religious service attendance and the importance of religion) were significant variables of interest. First, a divide in religious affiliation did appear wherein Latinx evangelical Protestants were more likely to identify with a conservative ideology than non-evangelical Latinxs. The divide demonstrates that Latinx evangelical Protestants continue to be more conservative than their Catholic or nonreligious counterparts.

Second, I find that religious service attendance is positively correlated with respondents identifying with a conservative ideology. For example, a respondent who never attends a religious service has a probability of 21.49% of aligning themselves with a conservative ideology; meanwhile, a respondent who attends a religious service more than once a week has a probability of 28.09% of aligning themselves with a conservative ideology. Even though this difference is slight, less than 7%, it is a statistically significant difference.

Lastly, I find that the importance of religion is also positively correlated with respondents aligning themselves with a conservative ideology. For example, respondents who said religion is not at all important to them had a 15.52% probability of aligning themselves with a conservative, while the probability for those who said religion was very important to them was 29.3%. Here, the difference is more notable, nearly double, and statistically significant.

Important to note here is that these conservatizing effects of religiosity occur regardless of religious affiliation. Religiosity’s conservatizing effects are not surprising since Latinxs with high levels of religiosity are more exposed to religious teachings and interpretations on social issues, such as abortion and same-sex marriage, and hold these beliefs highly in their moral compass, which then moves them towards constructing a more conservative ideology. However, more research is required to understand whether this conservative ideology is applicable to other issues, such as immigration.

Republican Party Affiliation

Based on the results from the models predicting the likelihood of Latinx respondents’ affiliating with the Republican party, only one significant difference appeared among religious affiliations. I found that nonreligious Latinxs appeared to be significantly less likely to affiliate with the Republican party than their religious counterparts, such as Catholics and evangelical Protestants. The nonreligious-religious divide aligns with the general trends of nonreligious individuals in the U.S. who are increasingly becoming liberal and supportive of the Democratic party (DeRose 2024). The data support my contention that the religious/secular divide in Latinx partisanship will increase, especially since preliminary discussions of the 2024 election demonstrate a shift of Latinx Catholics to the Republican party (Schlumpf 2024).

There were no meaningful differences between levels of religious service attendance and levels of individuals’ importance of religion. This finding demonstrates that although high levels of religiosity create a higher likelihood for Latinxs to hold a conservative ideology, it does not automatically translate to affiliation with the Republican party. The outcome aligns with reporting of religious Latinx people who struggle to fully support the Republican party (Bharath 2024; Medina 2020; Tamara 2020).

Conclusion

Overall, my research shows that even though highly religious Latinxs may align with a conservative ideology, it does not automatically translate to Republican party support. However, results are mixed since Martinez and Martí (2024), who used the same dataset, found that Latinx Evangelicals were more likely to support Trump in the 2020 presidential election and that there was a positive correlation between religious service attendance and support for Trump. Therefore, when thinking about Latinxs and their shift to the right, we must consider what precisely about therRight they are turning to: conservative ideologies, the Republican party, or ideological figures.

Lastly, as the religious demographics of the Latinx community continue to change, specifically towards a higher share of nonreligious individuals, we must reconsider whether the Catholic-Protestant divide still holds today and look towards a religious-secular divide within the Latinx community. Additionally, as scholars continue to research religion, Latinxs, and the right, we must be careful not to create new generalizations that presume that Latinx evangelicals are automatically associated with conservative Republican politics. These communities and other highly religious Latinxs are not committed to a single party and can still be persuaded by both sides. More needs to be known about what is politically important to these highly religious groups of Latinxs and what they look for in political candidates.

Endnotes

[1] For more detailed information on the statistical methods please feel free to reach out to the author.

References

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Featured Photo Credit: National Cathedral at Dusk, 13 September 2012, Photo by Bjohnston024 on Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0