The biggest demographic divisions in U.S. party voting currently are by race, religion, and LGBTQ orientation. You might hear a lot more about other demographics like gender, age, urban/suburban/rural, and so on – and these are all interesting gaps. But the widest gaps are found with race, religion, and LGBTQ. So, for example, here’s the percentages of the two-party vote from the 2020 presidential election for some groups that tend to support Democrats:

• Women: 56% Biden and 44% Trump

• Gen Z: 66% Biden and 34% Trump

• Urban: 67% Biden and 33% Trump

• LGBTQ: 79% Biden and 21% Trump

• Atheist and agnostic: 84% Biden and 16% Trump

• Black: 88% Biden and 12% Trump

Starting with the biggest of the current big deals, the first split here is by race/ethnicity – black vs. Hispanic/Asian vs. white.

 You can click on these for some detailed info (including overviews of party voting, issue positions, where they tend to live, etc.):

• Blacks

• Hispanics/Asians

• Whites

After the first split, the biggest remaining group is whites. Within this group, there are two key possible splits – one involving religion and the other involving LGBTQ. On religion, there’s an enormous voting difference between whites who are non-Catholic Christians, on one side, and whites who are explicitly not Christian, on the other side – including atheists, agnostics, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, and Hindus. There are also big differences based on how often they attend religious services.

These religious differences are also similar in size to the differences between LGBTQ whites and straight whites. Indeed, LGBTQ whites are essentially indistinguishable politically from whites who are explicitly not Christian – both are remarkably liberal groups, especially at higher education levels. Not coincidentally, they have in common that they’re all potential targets of disapproval and discrimination from religious conservatives.

So, I find it helps simplify matters to combine these groups into a single category of Religious/Sexual Minorities, which includes folks who are any one or more of the following: lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, atheist, agnostic, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, and Hindu.

Then, as I said, being a non-Catholic Christian is the key contrast on the right, and church attendance also factors in as a key distinction. After playing around with it a bit, I came up with a very simple way to quickly summarize the key differences in religion and LGBTQ demographics that gets you the most political bang for your demographic buck: For each person, start with 0 points; add 1 point if they’re a non-Catholic Christian; add one point if they attend religious services at least a couple of times a month; and subtract one point if they’re one of the Religious/Sexual Minorities.

What you end up with are 4 categories:

• People with negative 1 point, which I’ll call the “Heathen Alliance” – these are people who (1) are any one or more of the following: lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, atheist, agnostic, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, and Hindu, and (2) are not also either non-Catholic Christians or regular attendees of religious services.

• People with 0 points, which I’ll call the “Heathen-Leaning Middle” – most of these folks are those to whom none of the categories apply. That is, they’re not Religious/Sexual Minorities, and they’re not non-Catholic Christians, and they don’t attend religious services regularly.

• People with 1 point, which I’ll call the “Trad-Leaning Middle” – here, you see lots of straight non-Catholic Christians who don’t attend services regularly, along with straight Catholics who do attend services regularly.

• People with 2 points, which I’ll call “Traditional” – this category includes all those who are simultaneously straight and non-Catholic Christians and regular churchgoers.

 The Traditional category contains most self-identified “Evangelical” Christians. I’ve decided for purposes of this analysis not to allow divisions by whether people label themselves as Evangelicals. As the term “Evangelical” has come to be so strongly associated with political views, it becomes less interesting to use it to explain political differences. It starts to look more like using self-labeled “liberal” or “conservative” ideology to explain political differences – when someone tells you that the reason a person holds a liberal position or votes in a liberal direction is because they’re liberal, the reality is that you haven’t made any progress in understanding things. With the “Evangelical” label, I think it’s more interesting to see results grounded in more concrete demographics like church attendance and education level.

Getting back to the chart, you can see that the second split after race for both the white group and the Hispanic/Asian group is into the four religion/LGBTQ camps. For the black group, in contrast, there aren’t really big differences in party voting as a function of religion and LGBTQ orientation. There are big differences within the black group stemming from religion/LGBTQ when it comes to specific issue opinions (e.g., views on abortion rights), to be sure. But these kinds of issue splits tend not to lead black voters to abandon Democratic voting.