Religious Groups Differ Widely in Their 2026 Midterm Preferences
White evangelical Protestants and White Catholics favor Republicans in the midterms, while other religious groups split or lean Democratic.
Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World
White evangelical Protestants and White Catholics favor Republicans in the midterms, while other religious groups split or lean Democratic.
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Standard lists of history’s most influential religious leaders – among them Abraham, Moses, Jesus, Muhammad, Siddhartha Gautama (the Buddha) – tend to be predominantly, if not exclusively, male. Many religious groups, including Roman Catholics and Orthodox Jews, allow only men to be clergy, while others, including some denominations in the evangelical Protestant tradition, have lifted that restriction only in recent decades. Yet it often appears that the ranks of the faithful are dominated by women.
Across 25 countries, Americans are the most likely to see the morality and ethics of people in their country as somewhat or very bad.
Singapore is the world’s most religiously diverse country overall as of 2020, while Yemen is the least diverse. But the U.S. ranks first among nations with very large populations, followed by Nigeria and Russia.
The Christian share of the population, after years of decline, has been relatively stable since 2019. And the religiously unaffiliated population, after rising rapidly for decades, has leveled off – at least temporarily.
The Global Religious Futures (GRF) project is jointly funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts and The John Templeton Foundation. Here are some big-picture findings from the GRF, together with context from other Pew Research Center studies.