As the Democratic Party came to be identified as the party of civil rights, white Christians increasingly moved to the Republican Party—a migration that political scientists have dubbed “the great white switch.”11 Beginning with 1980 and in every national presidential election since, the voting patterns of religious Americans can be accurately described this way: majorities of white Christians—including not just evangelicals but also mainliners and Catholics—vote for Republican candidates, while majorities of all other religious groups vote for Democratic candidates.
