Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World
Christians remain by far the largest religious group in the United States, but the Christian share of the population has declined markedly. In the past seven years, the percentage of adults who describe themselves as Christians has dropped from 78.4% to 70.6%. Once an overwhelmingly Protestant nation, the U.S. no longer has a Protestant majority. […]
Like the 2007 Religious Landscape Study, the new survey shows a remarkable degree of churn in the U.S. religious landscape. If Protestantism is treated as a single religious group, then fully 34% of American adults currently have a religious identity different from the one in which they were raised, which is up six percentage points […]
The U.S. population is undergoing a variety of demographic changes. For example, racial and ethnic diversity has been increasing as non-Hispanic whites have declined as a share of the population. And the share of adults who are married has been declining for decades. These broader changes are reflected within many of the major religious groups […]
Previous research has shown clear differences in the religious identity, beliefs and practices of people from different demographic groups. Young adults tend to be less religiously affiliated than older people. Women tend to be more religiously affiliated than men. There are far more Catholics among Latinos than among people from other racial and ethnic backgrounds. […]
The centerpiece of Pew Research Center’s 2014 Religious Landscape Study is a nationally representative telephone survey conducted June 4-Sept. 30, 2014, among a sample of 35,071 U.S. adults. Approximately 60% of the interviews were conducted with respondents reached on cellphones (n=21,160) and 40% were completed on landlines (n=13,911). A minimum of 300 interviews were conducted […]
The 2014 Religious Landscape Study has several unique strengths. Its large sample size (n=35,071) and detailed, branching set of questions about religious identity make it possible to estimate the size of a wide variety of religious groups with a high degree of precision. The large sample also makes it possible to describe the characteristics of […]
Thursday, April 23, 10 A.M. to 11:30 A.M. The Pew Research Center’s new demographic projections– the first formal forecasts using data on age, fertility, mortality, migration and religious switching for the world’s eight major religious groups – finds that the religious profile of the world is rapidly changing. By 2050, the number of Muslims around […]
A majority of Americans favor the death penalty for those convicted of murder, but support is at a 40-year low.
39% of Americans identify as independents, more than they do as Democrats ( 32%) or as Republicans (23%). This is the highest percentage of independents in more than 75 years of public opinion polling.
Pew Research Center has been tracking the party affiliation of the general public for over 20 years. Explore the party ID data for two dozen demographic subgroups, categorized by gender, race, education, generation, and religious affiliation.