Republicans three times more likely than Democrats to hold Christian nationalist views: Survey

Republicans are three times more likely to hold Christian nationalist views than Democrats, according to a recent survey by the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI).

Fifty-five percent of Republicans qualify as Christian nationalists versus 25 percent of independents and 16 percent of Democrats, according to PRRI. Forty-three percent of Republicans qualified as “[s]keptics” or “[r]ejecters” when it comes to Christian nationalism versus 73 percent of independents and 83 percent of Democrats.

The survey also looked at patterns of support for Christian nationalism across the U.S. states, with regions such as the Midwest and Deep South seeing high percentages of those who hold Christian nationalist beliefs. North Dakota and Mississippi both were found to have 50 percent of their residents holding Christian nationalist beliefs.

States on both the East and the West Coasts were found to have lower percentages of those who hold Christian nationalist beliefs, with states like Washington, Oregon and Massachusetts all having less than 20 percent of their residents holding Christian nationalist beliefs.

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) was labeled “the embodiment of white Christian Nationalism in a tailored suit” in a newsletter by the president and founder of PRRI, Robert Jones, in early November of last year, shortly after Johnson gained the gavel.

“While Johnson is more polished than other right wing leaders of the GOP who support this worldview… his record and previous public statements indicate that he’s a textbook example of white Christian Nationalism—the belief that God intended America to be a new promised land for European Christians,” Jones said in the newsletter.

Johnson has pushed back on criticism of his Christianity, stating in November of last year that those who give that criticism “don’t know” him.

“I’ve been labeled all kinds of stuff, but these people don’t know me,” Johnson said in an interview on “Fox News Sunday.” “Look, my family … it’s no fun to be misquoted and maligned and mocked of course, but we know that comes with the job, and we’re unfazed.”

The PRRI study was conducted from March 9 to Dec. 7, 2023 and included 22,465 adults in the U.S. with a margin of error of plus or minus 0.82 percentage points.