Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World
A Third of Adults Under 30 Are Unaffiliated; U.S. Protestant Population Dips Below 50% Washington, D.C. — A new, comprehensive demographic study of more than 230 countries and territories conducted by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life finds that more than eight-in-ten people worldwide identify with a religious group. The report […]
Download the Methodology as a PDF (180 KB, 17pages) This study provides comprehensive demographic estimates of the size and distribution of eight major religious groups in the 232 countries and territories for which the United Nations Population Division provides general population estimates as of 2010.16 It includes estimates for Christians, Muslims, the religiously unaffiliated, Hindus, […]
Taken together, Romney and Obama were the subject of a slight majority (52%) of religion coverage over the 15-month period studied. The remainder of the coverage was spread among their running mates and the seven Republican primary candidates who ultimately withdrew. However, Romney was the subject of twice as much religion-related coverage as Obama, with […]
Four years ago, in the 2008 presidential election, media coverage of religion focused on a pivotal, defining moment for each candidate. In Romney’s case, the coverage peaked in December 2007 when he delivered a major speech about faith in public life in an effort to reduce public unease with Mormonism; many media reports likened Romney’s […]
While just 1% of all the election coverage studied was squarely about religion, in the 2012 campaign PEJ also analyzed the number of stories that mentioned religion, even in passing. By that measure, 6% of campaign stories in 2012 contained at least some reference to religion. (Because this was a new measure, no comparable figure […]
In contrast with the 2008 presidential campaign, moments in which either of the candidates was challenged on his religious identity, or forced to defend a controversial religious position, were muted and short-lived. Among the incidents that rose to the surface, at least momentarily, was when a Baptist minister from Texas described Romney’s Mormon faith as […]
This report on media coverage of religion in the 2012 presidential campaign uses data derived from two different methodologies. Data regarding the coverage in the mainstream press were derived from the Project for Excellence in Journalism’s in-house coding operation. (Click here for details on how that project, also known as PEJ’s News Coverage Index, is conducted.) Data […]