More Democrats than Republicans welcome an atheist president

Gallup polls on the electability of an atheist U.S. President had always shown disappointing results, with the least number of Americans warming up to the idea. Then something happened in 2012 when over half of those polled said they were okay with an atheist being in influential American politician. In 2015, atheism became downgraded as being the of the worst traits in any presidential candidate. Atheists became second worst from the absolute worst. A “socialist ” president was, according to those polled, the worst-case scenario.

The 2019 Gallup poll showed zero change when it came to “socialist, ” with only 47 percent of U.S. voters willing to support that candidate. The “atheist ” U.S. President received a slight push up to 60 percent of Americans say they have no problem if the presidential candidate is an atheist . It continues to be the second last on the electability list but with one big difference: there is no stigma now.

The Gallup poll shows that Americans are now much more comfortable with an increasingly diverse candidate group. The “atheist” group enjoyed an uptick of only two percent, the smallest among all other groups. When it comes to analyzing the atheist support base, then 71 percent of Democrats were comfortable with an atheist candidate, compared to only 42 percent of Republicans espousing similar views. Age matters too, with 72 percent of all voters below 34 years may support any openly atheist candidate while 54 percent of the 55 years or older voting population will do the same. It has also been found that people with higher formal education supports atheism more compared to their less educated counterparts.

Good policy making has nothing to do with religion. Poll: 60% of Americans would vote for an atheist for president, an all-time high.https://t.co/rfO4za5m5n — Arihan Jain (@Arihan_) May 10, 2019

It is apparent that religious identification is losing its weight in American politics as an increasing number of Americans are willing to vote for different groups. If these trends continue, then atheists will at one point of time shortly have electability equal to Jews and Catholics. The last two were once pariahs of the American public. The first poll held by Gallup in 1937 saw only 47 percent of Americans okay with a Jewish president. The figure is now 93 percent in 2019. The number of openly non-religious politicians have risen at the state level.

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