Politics, Polling, and Religious Identity - Chris Borick (Re-Release)

This episode of ReligionWise features Chris Borick the Director of the Muhlenberg College Institute of Public Opinion. In this conversation, we consider how pollsters try to understand religious identity and sentiment, the limitations of those methods for considering religious minorities, and how the rise of a religiously unaffiliated public has shown up in recent polls.

Transcript

Chip Gruen: 0:03

Welcome to ReligionWise, I'm your host, Chip Gruen For today's episode, we're actually going to rerun a conversation that we had originally in January of 2023 with Professor of Political Science Chris Borick from Muhlenberg College. He's also the director of the Muhlenberg College Institute of Public Opinion. The reason that we're re running this episode is because I think it seems newly relevant now, as we stare down the barrel of the United States presidential election in 2024. There has obviously been a lot of conversation about different parts of the electorate and how issues around race, ethnicity, religion might affect a presidential election in which the margins are going to be razor thin, or at least that's what it looks like sitting here in August. So we are all called on, if you're politically interested or politically active at all, to look at polls, read polls, understand what they mean. And I think it's also interesting to notice what they can and can't tell us. So in this conversation, pay particular attention to the way that sample size affects what details are imagined is important and which details are not. So for example, when you get polling that seeks to capture religious diversity, you can have large portions of the electorate that that will be statistically significant, like Catholic or Protestant Christian or even Jewish. But when you go down the line and you get to religious traditions that are not as well represented within that sample, they end up being blocked into "other" so that you get very strange things, so that atheists or Sikhs or humanists or pagans get lumped in to religiously other when, obviously it would be the case that their voting patterns and election priorities would not be exactly the same, and in some cases, might be diametrically opposed to one another. So I think just as a primer for thinking about polling, what it can tell us and what it can't tell us as we head into this next election cycle, will be, will be super interesting, will be super useful. And if, after you finish this episode, you want to go back and hit the archives for a few more that might be relevant in the same vein, you might consider the episode that released in December of 2023 Religion, Politics and Vocation, with Sarah Trone Garriott, which features a state senator from Iowa who is a progressive left-leading state senator who talks about the religious and cultural diversity within her own district. And finally, you might want to go back and re listen to December of 2022 Religion, Interfaith and Public Policy with Frederick Davie, who is very interested in the intersections of politics, policy and religion and religious difference, and so that gives another perspective on how these three discursive elements might come together within, you know, within the election cycle, within the the ways that we think about public life and religion. So so check those two episodes out as well, and we'll be back in September with a new episode. So without further ado, here's my conversation with Chris Borick. I hope you enjoy it. Chris Borick, Professor of Political Science and director of Muhlenberg College Institute of Public Opinion, welcome to ReligionWise.

Chris Borick: 4:00

Hey, thank you so much Chip. It's a absolute pleasure.

Chip Gruen: 4:03

So it seems to me that we can divide polling into a couple of different categories. First, the polling that gets the most attention, approval, disapproval of political figures, polling of registered or likely voters ahead of primary and general elections. The second category is less driven by election cycles, concentrating instead on the popularity of ideas and policies, which offers us some insight maybe into individuals and community identities, affiliations, demographics, those sorts of things. Does that seem about right to you? Is that division real in the field?

Chris Borick: 4:36

Yeah, it's very real Chip. You know, when we think about polling the polls you mentioned first, the electoral politics polls, the horse race polls, the approval ratings, those types of polls are often the most cited. You know, people love to keep score of elections, they like to have an idea of where races are. So they really have a high appetite for those kinds, including the press right, so those are some of the polls that that do get the most attention. But but a majority of polls, if you look at kind of the universe, of public opinion research are not electoral polls, they might look at policy issues, beliefs, attitudes, perceptions of society. And those to be honest with you are my favorite polls, those are the ones I like to do the most. In some ways they're easier. For example, electoral polls often look at trying to hit a likely voter audience that changes and is moving and evolving, and so it's really complex and really a little challenging, sometimes more challenging than you'd even want. General population polls, because we know the population parameters because of the census and others, and that they're not as time sensitive as a quick election poll, are more fun to do and often more rewarding.

Chip Gruen: 5:53

So I don't want to get into methodologies too much. That's not exactly what we're interested in here, but since you mentioned it and thinking about knowing, you know, the population not having to think about likely voters. There's something that's been on my mind around polling, and I think that this would be true of both of the kinds of polls we mentioned, I just want to get your temperature on the sampling bias problem. Because even if we're thinking about, you know, polls of religious identity or Gallup does belief in God or things like that, the people who are likely to pick up the phone or answer a poll or talk to a stranger, it seems like that really, I mean, would shift age wise, for example, but might also shift, you know, around one's ideology or one's perception of the world or one's perception of threat from the outside. I mean, how do you think this could skew our perceptions of even the general population? Even if we're not having to think about people who may or may not vote?

Chris Borick: 6:55

Yeah, no, it's a great point. And one of the methodological challenges for public opinion, researchers, Chip. And first of all, it's not easy, it's not easy to get around some of those non respondent issues that have challenged the field for years and years, and I've only gotten more challenging with changes in communication, everything you described is, is accurate. So first of all, it takes a lot of attention to those things, recognizing that those are potentials, and you could see it sometimes, especially if you have population parameters, right. So for example, if I'm doing a general poll in Pennsylvania, and I know a certain segment of the population, you know, by age or racial or ethnic identity is at a level and were underrepresenting that or over-representing that, we could do a couple of things we could, we could try a lot harder to go back and reach those populations. And sometimes we do- takes a lot of money takes a lot of time. Other times we'll we'll try to account for that with statistical weighting, where we weight those percentages of the population to their, or the sample to their population parameters, that has risks involved with it, right, you're making assumptions based off the group and maybe that group of young people that responded isn't representative of the broader young group. So there's lots of challenges with that. One of the things we get to do is sometimes validate. And this is where election polls come in handy, because there is an actual result that we can compare to, to see what we found. And if we are, in essence, kind of replicating what happens in reality or close to it, it gives us a sense that the measures we took to address some of those limitations are paying off. Doesn't mean it's perfect, and lots of polling breakdowns, if you will, over time, but it's a challenging area, so we have to really adapt methodologically as as researchers to account for those things, sometimes we do it well. But the one constant is that those pressures are going to continue for quite some time.

Chip Gruen: 8:58

Yeah, it's interesting, you know, I think about something like race or ethnicity or age, you know, you know your number of respondents, and you know, the number of people in the population more or less, and you can account for that. I always wonder about things like, you know, is there some correlation between what people think about climate change, and whether they're likely to respond to a poll or not, which would be impossible to get your hands on, if there's a correlation in something like that.

Chris Borick: 9:25

It's very true, it's very true, but you don't have a population parameter. You're kind of making assumptions, right, based on some other things, that you have a pretty good representative sample, but again, you don't have complete, you know, confidence that that's the case.

Chip Gruen: 9:41

So obviously, on ReligionWise, we're interested in the ways that religion and religious identity interact with other aspects of public and communal life. Can you give us a basic lay of the land for how pollsters think about religious identity? And the electorate or the general population? And what that's looked like over time?

Chris Borick: 10:00

Yeah, it's a great question, obviously, you know, pertinent to our, our talk today and your work on ReligionWise, Chip. So first of all, pollsters regularly ask questions about individual's religious identity, you know, how they affiliate, you know, what they believe, how they practice their religion, you know, and, and so those questions are pretty common as someone that's polled now for, you know, a quarter of a century, I'd say over 90% of the polls that I've conducted, have some, at least one religious question item in it, and probably the most common is just how do you identify, you know, in a classic breakdown of options from Catholic to Protestant to Jewish, you know, to Muslim, or none which we'll talk about moving forward. And so we tried to do that because it is predictive of lots of of things that we're studying you know, what you believe, how you affiliate politically, what you are concerned about and so measuring those things are pretty common and most pollsters in general population surveys will have some type of religious question that the question often for us is how many questions you know, depending on the content and what we're trying to measure, which is fascinating, right? So a general identification is important, but probably as important is the level of practice, or engagement with your religion, do you go to mass or synagogue or services, right? How often do you do that? Tells us a whole bunch, especially when paired with your affiliation and how you identify, and so we, you know, trying to get it at that. And then kind of, for example, you mentioned climate change, and we do a national survey on climate change every year. And we have to ask some, we want to ask some religious questions, because it's, it really is fascinating relationship between religious factors, and beliefs and opinions on climate change. So we ask a question, generally, you know, do you identify as whatever, whatever religion? And then we ask kind of a follow up question that asks about your perception on the Bible, Or, you know, and we say, "Hey, is it is it the, you know actual word of God? Is it the informed word of God that is interpreted? Or is it a book of fables?" Right? That breakdown tells us a lot about kind of where individuals might be, it's very predictive of a bunch of things that we, we look at. So, you know, measuring religiosity, if you will, is is a challenge. And it's, it's interesting to think about the types of items that we might employ to do that, and it differs across polls and differs across researchers and of course, content area, you know, if our focus was very deeply on religious issues, we'll have many more measures.

Chip Gruen: 13:00

Yeah, it's interesting, I'm interested and happy to hear about, you know, thinking about the differences between belief, affiliation, practice, frequency, and, and it also occurs to me, like the relationship between all of those things might be different, depending on the religious tradition you're dealing with as well. Like what kinds of religions or religious identities can be practiced individually versus communally, for example? Like, there's a lot of interesting stuff going on there, I think.

Chris Borick: 13:31

Yeah, there is, Chip. And it's also one of those, those challenges, right? You know, every survey I've done, it's always a matter of space, right? What questions could you fit in? And which ones and they're inevitably questions I'd love to get in, right that you have to leave on the cutting floor at the end, because you have to prioritize, you know, the breadth of types of demographics rather than the, the depth or the intensity. But I would love to have many more kind of items that are religiously affiliated, because often you'll find things that that are just really telling, based on that nuanced version that might get washed away with more aggregate or kind of, you know, broad measures that we employ.

Chip Gruen: 14:19

So one of the things at the Institute for Religious and Cultural Understanding that we're really interested in is the breadth of religious expression. So our WorldViews program is not only dealing with, you know, major Christian organizations that have lots of people, but also thinking about smaller, you know, we just interviewed, you know, someone from a Pagan community or the Sikh community is not very large in the Lehigh Valley, for example, but we want to think about those, but it seems to me for your work, you know, thinking about the larger groups gives us a better handle on public opinion in general, right. So going into this, the the sort of less populous types of religious identity would be, I mean, not counterproductive, but wouldn't you're not allowed to have that sort of nuance for the metrics that you're interested in? Does that sound about right?

Chris Borick: 15:12

It does and it's a little sad, right? Often, for example, when we do a national poll, or a Pennsylvania poll, or even a regional poll, you know, we our religious distribution, and our sample usually looks like the population, right? So if it's predominantly Christian area, we're going to get predominantly Christian individuals in our sample, right. And that could be an overwhelming majority, in some cases, leaving us with very small sample sizes, for religious affiliations that are fairly small within the population right often as you just mentioned, individuals that might have, you know, a Pagan identity or often cases, you know, even more traditional religious groups that we might think like, individuals identifying as Jewish, right in places we might just have, you know, 20 people in our survey of 500 that identify in that group and that really makes it hard to make any type of generalizations about those identities, per se. And it really is often you know, what's, what's sad is sometimes we'll get around that we'll simply aggregate non-Christian groups into "other religions," right. And as someone that studies religion, I'm sure that's just horrifying to think that you're, you know, you know, putting a group so disparate in their views into just a category. But we do that mathematically, just just just to compare right Christians versus non-Christians. And, you know, I'm sure we'll talk about it. One group that we often have are people that might describe themselves as not practicing religion, atheist, agnostic, right? Sometimes we lump those into a group. And it does wash away so much of it, which leaves the kind of the big point, I think Chip is those groups, you have to kind of target as a separate project, right. So if you want, I've done studies, for example, on Jewish Americans, you know that we find methodologies not always easy to really target a group, specifically, get a big enough sample of that group to make better inferences than we could ever do with these broad population surveys where the sample sizes are just too small to make meaningful inferences.

Chip Gruen: 17:40

So let's stick to a place then where I think you have more luck with getting a sample size big enough. And I'll tell you the narrative, at least when I teach my Christian Traditions class, what that narrative looks like, the narrative that goes in my head, around the last 50 years goes something like this, that Evangelical and otherwise socially conservative Christian voters were not particularly active until the 1980 election cycle. Since that time, that voting block has become very powerful first coming out for Ronald Reagan, and then other Republican candidates predominantly after that. There are a number of groups or a number of issues that that group is particularly attentive to around reproductive health, definitions of marriage roles, public education, etc. This has resulted also in realignment of the parties, even if we're thinking about realignment of the way that the country is imagined, you know, the Democratic southern South is no more largely because of this trend. Does that sort of narrative about the way that this kind of socially conservative group of Christian voters has shifted? Does that seem about right to you? Is it overly general? What do you think?

Chris Borick: 18:52

No, no, I think it's right, Chip, it was one of the defining features of American politics, or certainly, when we layer religiosity into it, you know, the emergence of Evangelical voters, as a defined and and impactful voting block in the United States has been, you know, a cornerstone of politics since the, since the 80s. And as you said, accurately, it really rose in the, in the 80s. And in some ways was intensified moving forward, you know, into the, into this this century. And, you know, often strategically, by the way, I'm sure, you know, you know, that, you know, is how that how that happened, didn't just happen, right? It just, it was very much orchestrated, and politically, you know, thought about, and has had impacts through many cycles, including the most recent cycle. We could, we could we could talk about that. But yeah, it's, you know, Evangelical voters have since the, since the 80s, become a increasingly core part of the Republican coalition in the United States. It's changed, as you said, as you tighten into regional politics in the south, you know, the South, which was historically the most democratic place in the country and dating back to the Civil War and its roots there. You know, largely white voters in the South were overwhelmingly Democrat, and also that overlaid with a area that was overwhelmingly Protestant, and often the Evangelical, and that made a part, right, that made it part of the politics that were in place in the South, and that's changed dramatically over the last 40 years.

Chip Gruen: 20:42

So here's a bit of my my frustration, because I think that story that we've laid out, I mean, totally makes sense, we can plot it, we can look at results in presidential elections and legislatures, we can see that. But I think the the part where I get frustrated is when you look at sort of pundants thinking about politics, thinking about religious identity, that it stops there, right? And so you get a narrative of the ascendancy of a and I will nuance it by saying a kind of Christianity or a kind of social conservatism, but on the other hand, there are lots of left leaning progressive religious identities as well within Christianity and out, so mainline Protestantism has in recent years become a lot more progressive. If you think about the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America or the Episcopal Church, for example, both have opened up to different kinds of identities been more welcoming, particularly around LGBTQ, etc. And then we also have groups like African Methodist Episcopal Church, the AME Church, that that maybe has been less progressive on on sex and gender issues, but certainly is very progressive on pluralism around race and ethnicity, for reasons that make all kinds of sense. So can you think a little bit or help me think a little bit about that coalition on the left? Does it operate in the same way as the coalition on the right, is it intentional in the same way as the coalition on the right? Because it seems to me like these, I mean, maybe they don't balance one another out, but they're both parts of the story of the confluence of politics and religious identity in the country. But yet I don't feel like they get the same airtime.

Chris Borick: 22:35

Yeah, it's a great observation, Chip, and really important, yeah, there is so much focus on the Evangelical presences within the GOP base and in strategy and coalition's in terms of elections. But you're very accurate. When you look, for example, at mainline Protestant Americans, people that identify with Lutheran Church, Methodist Church, Presbyterians. You know, at one time, it was the bedrock of the Republican Party. In many ways, lots of you know, Northern suburban Americans that voted in American elections, voted overwhelmingly Republican with those identities, right with those religious identities. And that's very much changed over time. And we see in recent elections, when we look at exit polls and studies of this, that mainline Protestant votes are pretty evenly distributed. And if if leaning anyway, lean Democrat, in most, especially in some high profile elections. And so you've seen that really change in terms of the coalition. Now, of course, one of the comparisons that you know well as in the size of those groups, as mainline Protestant groups have tended to decline in size versus Evangelicals that have risen generally, over that, that period, you know, the impact is different, right, in terms of, of electoral politics, but nonetheless, still still salient. And then, as you mentioned, you know, as we talk about Black voters, and their religious identity, you know, the presence of the Black Church, right, if largely just defined, broadly defined, has been incredibly pivotal in, in democratic politics, American politics, but in contemporary times, there is no group that is a more loyal supporter of the Democratic Party, than Black voters. And among Black voters, most loyal Democrats are often highly religious, affiliated with groups, like you said, the AME groups and Southern Baptist groups that have long had a place in, in democratic politics, and even more so now. So the coalitions have changed, they've evolved, but certainly beyond Evangelical Christians, the place of religion in American politics is much richer and deeper partisan - just partisan politics too is all we're talking about this point.

Chip Gruen: 25:07

Yeah, you think about the confluence of race and, and political activity in the South - I'm thinking about the, like, the Souls to the Polls, initiatives, right, where you, you know, you make sure that you're you have a movement that wants to get polling places open on Sundays, so that you can compound church attendance, you know, in some of these, you know, particularly in the Black Church with getting out and going straight to the polling place.

Chris Borick: 25:35

Yeah, indeed, you know, those those overlays are fascinating, right. And it brings in all kinds of interesting questions that we might entertain in an elections or politics class, right? Where are those divides? Where are they, you know, legally, allowed to, to go, which is a whole other variety, I'm sure a great great a show in itself, for you, Chip. But yeah, there's connection points all over the place, that we that could be examined.

Chip Gruen: 26:07

So harder, as we've mentioned before, harder to get our hands on, but I think important for us to recognize here is that religious identity in the American population is more than just thinking about Christianity. We could think about, you know, Judaism, for example, Jewish identities, with similar things right about some Jewish communities will lean very far left some Jewish communities will lean very far right. So we could think you know about whether we're talking about Orthodox reform or conservative or reconstruction, right, we could we could do that whole thing as well. But then also, the other big question that I think is maybe a puzzle that needs answering a little bit is for thinking about the future, is about other religious identities in the country growing, can think about Muslims and Hindus, for example, or even I mean, to get back to another Christian identity, Latino Catholic voters as well. What can we say about increasing diversity of religious identity in the country as it relates to both public opinion and more specifically to the electorate?

Chris Borick: 27:15

I mean, all those elements are key, even, even in the most recent cycle, Chip, as you kind of piece it take, take it apart, and we're still doing that, you know, looking at all the evidence and validation and exit polling, and things, but you see, you know, within groups, and again, the confluence, right, so if we look at the growing Hispanic Latino population in the United States, and we think about that as a voting block, if you will, and one of the most contested now and coveted voting blocks, where does religiosity overlay with that group? And it's fascinating, right, the group largely leans democratic, as you look at, although in this election, we saw and especially in places like Florida, that lean go away. And there's, you know, the diversity within the Latino and Hispanic community is very important Cuban Americans versus Mexican, or Puerto Rican, you know, individuals really different - so we're washing away differences there, but also religious differences, as you talk about, you know, Catholic versus Evangelical Latinos, very different perspective, right? Religiously practicing Latino and Hispanics, very different than those that might be less engaged in their politics, and that's really where some of the strategy of contemporary elections have come in. Republicans have increasingly targeted Hispanic voters, who are religious in their natures say, is finding an opening that they think along cultural conservatism and, and those and beliefs that align more with perhaps traditional Republican views, might be an ability to crack into a growing demographic through a religious and also cultural lens. And so you see these kinds of, of places, as you mentioned, other groups that that are growing, you know, the broadly defined Asian American population, right, that often has a high level of people identifying as Muslim or Hindu, right, and how that might be channeled. And then there's some there's a little bit of overlay on the conservatism issue, and those types of things that make those groups that also vote, generally Democratic, not monolithic in their nature. And as their size grows, and that is a growing population within the United States, I think attention will increasingly be paid to, to how both parties might lay strategic kind of claim to those those those populations right through at least partially religiously identified markers.

Chip Gruen: 30:01

Yeah, it's not hard to imagine an individual who be you know, because it's a part of the tradition of their religious community, for example, is socially, pretty conservative, right around family issues, sex and gender issues, etc. But then also has a really expansive view of what civil rights should look like, or what immigration policies should be, or something like that. And so they they end up, you know, one could imagine somebody like that being caught between the the two parties or between the two platforms.

Chris Borick: 30:36

Oh totally and that's, you know, all the groups we just discussed, but even among Black voters, you've seen that, right, you've seen attempts to, among Republicans, to really leverage those connection points, to try to persuade Black voters to vote Republican and with with a marginal degree of success, you know, as we look at and again, politics is probably my most, you know, overused cliche is about about margins. It's won in the margins in places like Pennsylvania and others. And so if you can, you know, even move a group two or three points, it's impactful, right? It's impactful. So we often, you know, we look at these big pictures and say, Oh, Black voters overwhelmingly Democrat, and they are, but if it's overwhelmingly at 93% versus 90%, and it's a close election, okay, it's impactful.

Chip Gruen: 31:31

Yeah. Yeah. Good. Very good point. Absolutely. So one of the major trends, and you've alluded to this already. So I know it's something that I think probably impacts both of our work a little bit, but one of the major trends of the last 20 years or so, and we could sort of quibble over how long this has been happening, we might also say the last 50 years, has been the decline of self-identification with membership in a religious community or in religious denomination, the number of those associated with this group, which we sometimes referred to as the nones, N O N E S not N U N S. Depending on the poll, depending on who you ask, I'd be interested to hear your number on this, somewhere between 30 and 50%? Teaching in a college, I think we both are acutely aware of the trend and how it affects 18 to 22 year olds, we can look at our matriculation data and find this bearing out in the same way. What do you make of this trend? How does it affect electoral politics, views on social policy, party affiliation, etc? Has this trend, you know, provided the headaches for you?

Chris Borick: 32:39

No, it uh, I wouldn't, I wouldn't call it a headache. But it's something that absolutely is significant in so many ways, both, you know, from a measurement perspective, and it's impactful, in a lot of ways, and you're dead on, Chip, this is not only you know, our research, but pollsters and public opinion researchers across the country have picked up on this, you know, trend, this as you said that that they bet they probably does, and it's really good observation probably dates back farther than we've really started to identify it, a lot of it's kind of identified as a 21st century artifact, and at least the intensity of it has expanded. But there's inklings of this much farther back, right. And scholars that have looked at it in public opinion researchers, but it's it's ballooned. So I've been pulling, you know, for over a quarter of a century, mostly in Pennsylvania, and before that out in Wisconsin, and we always ask these religious marker questions, right, even the identity questions. And so over hundreds and hundreds of surveys that I've done, you know, every year you kind of look at it, well, what percentage are identifying, at least you know, saying that they identify with religious religious groups. And as you said, the trend is has absolutely moved to a greater portion of the population say, I don't have a religious identity than nones as you, as you said, or that they are agnostic. In their kind of views, those two are growing, that it's interesting that atheism, you know, as an option that we look at, has grown modestly over that time, but not at the same rate as the nones/agnostic. And I know, I'm blending stuff together, here, but at least from a polling perspective, those those are the are the growth sectors, if you will, and it's dramatic, it's dramatic, your number, you know, about 30 to 50, in that range is where most polls put it so if you look at our polls, and it changes, right, if we're looking at a an electoral poll versus a general population poll, we might have a smaller percentage of ones and an electoral poll than we would a general population poll because of voting patterns. But on average, over the last, you know, handful of years, we're probably seeing 35 to 40% fall in those categories that are there. And then you could you know, it's actually interesting, as I said, it's hard to get inferences about small religious groups, percentage wise of the population, maybe Muslims, Hindus, Jews, that's not the case anymore. For nones, we have a big sample size. So we start to be able to really look at how they think what they believe, or how they they act. And there's overlays with age, all the things you you said, especially, you know, with cohorts like college students, where this is the majority group, by the way, and it's the majority, so just put that into kind of context. And that groups, you know, ascending, while other groups are not, and that doesn't guarantee anything, you know, we could have a change culturally, that might shift that. So again, I'm not a predictor of such things, but but probabilistically, at least for the short term, they're going to be more impactful electorally, and they do they do lean Democratic. They also overwhelmingly lean at least in their brand identification as Independent. They might vote more democratically in general, but they don't like to be called Democrats. They often want to be called Independent. And that might be you know, they don't want to affiliate with religion. They don't want to affiliate with a party, either. So that kind of synergy I think is fascinating to look at.

Chip Gruen: 36:25

Yeah, I would really want to drive that home. Because one of the things I'm thinking about here is that just because to say somebody does not affiliate with a religious group doesn't necessarily mean for example, I know Gallup has for years and years asked this question about belief in God, right. And the belief in God number doesn't drop nearly so quickly as the affiliation membership question. So the correlation I always point to is that if you go back a couple generations in my family, people were really involved in like the Lions Club and social lodges and things like that, which are almost, I mean, I don't want to offend anybody to say that they're irrelevant, or they're gone. But they're certainly the membership in in even our generation, or certainly younger than us is, is much, much less. And it seems to me, like those aren't religious organizations, but they're tracking something similar about membership and affiliation versus larger questions of values and meaning, you know, meaning making, etcetera.

Chris Borick: 37:28

Yeah, yeah that's a great observation, and, you know, borne out by lots of statistics, right, about, you know, how we join and where we join, and how we align with organizations in general, right. And, and the none, as you said, that does certainly, and this is why you need multiple measures, right? Someone that says they're, they're not affiliated might be on beliefs, very, you know, more aligned with somebody that might be practicing, it just, it gets complex. That's why multiple measures are very important to have. But that overlay that I think is fascinating, right, is that that I don't consider myself, you know, this group that they might not consider themselves part of an organized religion, they might not consider themselves part of a organized party, and they might not consider themselves engaged with organized community groups, right? That doesn't - and by the way, that doesn't mean that they're not engaged in communities, right. They might volunteer, they might do things, but that's kind of on their time, under their, you know, agency.

Chip Gruen: 38:37

Right, with no membership card, necessarily.

Chris Borick: 38:39

Right, not any of these.

Chip Gruen: 38:43

You know, actually, and I'll take a host prerogative here just to share something that I think really again, drives this point home. But you know, in some of my classes, we take field trips to local communities. And one of the things that I've started to learn to ask is membership numbers versus attendance. And if you go and you look at, say, mainline Protestant communities, their membership might be 500, and their attendance might be 100, right. So like 20% of people who are members will attend on a weekly basis. If you go to a Evangelical community, their membership might be and the community I'm thinking of is much larger but say their membership might be 500, and their weekly attendance might be 2000, right. So it runs in the opposite direction, that the membership is a subset of attendance. Whereas in mainline Protestantism, attendance is a subset of membership. Which I think just speaks volumes about sort of the structure and organization about the way that these groups, see those two, you know, those those two constituencies.

Chris Borick: 39:49

That's fascinating, really cool. You know, and that's, that's insightful. And I think it does kind of overlay with those broader trends that we saw, and also, again, speaks to the idea of how you measure things, right. So if I asked of somebody, are you formally affiliated with a religious institution? And somehow, I don't know if that's well worded, versus you know, do you engage in religious practices, right, or service, it might be very different, right. And by the way, there, then you start getting into the, the joy of data analysis, right, getting into those groups, like you said, finding someone that that doesn't affiliate but goes regularly versus someone that is affiliated, but never goes and seeing how they align. So that's as a geeky academic, I see nothing but cool research questions there.

Chip Gruen: 40:41

Okay, so to get away a little bit from the elections and those sorts of issues, and to think more about public opinion more broadly, we've touched on a number of these issues already. But we might add, you know, climate change, pandemic response, gender identity, those sorts of things, as you know, issues that are currently being polled that people are currently interested in. As someone who conducts polls, how do you think about those sorts of issues as related to religious identity or religious community and you know, or religious practice like we've problematized that enough already, but so we talk a lot about polarization around party, but it seems to me there's an older kind of polarization around these sorts of social issues. How much are we seeing of this sort of being a self sorting around social issues? And and, and rather than something new, right? We're just sort of seeing it in a different lens.

Chris Borick: 41:37

Yeah, that's a really cool question framed nicely. Chip, it's, you know, you think about these pathways, you know, between party, religious identity, you know a whole series of demographics, and how it might shapes one's support for policies, and then vice versa, how the policies and positions might shape your identity, right, that it's always a great question that we asked kind of causality within political science is like, okay, are the are your beliefs leading you to the policy to the party? Is the party leaving you to the beliefs, your affiliation? And it's over time, it's a little dynamic, right. And there, I think there are some evidence right now, actually really interesting studies that I've read, that your party identification in this age of kind of negative partisanship that we live in, is actually leading you to some of your religious viewpoints and affiliations. We're seeing this, I think this is like in the moment, like one of the cool research questions is that you have individuals that that based on, you know, where they stand politically, right now, are making decisions about how they might practice or if they're shopping for a, you know, a church or a religious organization that aligns with them, that seems to be more common, at least by some metrics that I'm seeing than it has been in the past, right. And rather than, you know, you're kind of shaped you start with your religion, you start with your other things, and that shapes your partisanship. So that by itself is fascinating. But then you get into the particulars of policy, and issues that you looked at. So we've probably talked over the years, most of my kind of academic research is on climate change, and I've followed that now for decades, given lots and lots and lots of national and regional polls, and the religious overlays, they're always I find incredibly fascinating, right? You might not think on the surface, like, why would you know, religion and climate change? Not the, not the first, like, Well, that's an easy comparison, right? Compared to religion and abortion, maybe or something like that. But nonetheless, it's, it's, it's impactful, right? It's so impactful. I'll give you just a quick side story, methodologically. So for years, we asked people open ended questions. So if we asked them, Do you think climate change is happening? And they said yes or no. Is there evidence of it? We'd ask them a follow up question. Well, what's the biggest factor that lead you to conclude that there's evidence of climate change, and people would point to science or their own experiences for it. And we kind of coded those into categories, we had never thought when we created it, that religious factors would, would appear regularly in those open ended comments, both why you think it's happening and why you don't think it's happening. So people would tell us, you know, what's the major reason they say, Well, the Bible, or that it's God's will or something like that. And so we had to kind of adjust our whole methodologies to, to account for its presence in a place we didn't think it necessarily would be. And those are the things like when we look at religion, across a variety of subjects, that we might locate it, and its impact in a array of factors that might not necessarily seem on first blush to be, you know, a clear connection point.

Chip Gruen: 44:57

So I love that story, because it confirms one bias of mine. And I want to ask you about sort of polling, you know, if you can speak for the field generally, but the bias of mine is that very often, religion is or religious identity, religious belief, religious affiliation, is very far down the list of the kinds of factors that that people thinking about, about public opinion or, or just generally, you know, studying human behavior. That it always seemed to me, and again, occupational hazard for me, is that, hey, we all have whether we are religiously affiliated or not, we all have a worldview, right? We all have a way in which we imagine the world working, that is based on assumptions about who we are and how we grew up and the communities we're around, etc. And this story, you tell is super interesting, because you offer them that corrective of how you then incorporate that. Do you think that in the field generally, I mean, obviously things like race and ethnicity and wealth, you know, social placement, all get a lot of attention. Do you do you see religion getting, I don't know, I don't know how to ask this getting the really getting the attention I think it deserves, right in contemporary polling, or is this still like the eighth factor in other things that people imagine are motivating public opinion?

Chris Borick: 46:27

That says it's a really good question. And I think your your position that that it's probably pushed aside, sometimes or overlooked maybe is a better word is true, just from my own experience. And I speak, you know, from writing lots and lots of surveys. And so imagine this, you're writing a survey, and you have limited number of questions, and you have so many substantive questions, so many demographic questions. And I've been in this place, and I have to admit it, you know, sometimes where I have to cut demographics. And so, you know, so if it's age, race, you know, income, educational attainment, gender, you know, that's a variety of ones, and religion, religious affiliation, whatever one we're using, which one gets cut? And I have to say that more often than not compared to those other ones, it would be the religion question. It would be like, well, I don't see any, as I said, maybe erroneously. Well, I don't see any logical connection, why this should affect, you know, someone's position on this. And it's probably captured with some of the other partisan things that we have. So, on the cutting floor, maybe that religion question gets dropped, and we're missing things, right. The climate example is perfect example, I just didn't see it. And my Co-op there, you know, who, which was fascinating, his, his wife is a Lutheran minister. And she she kind of said, well, why didn't you see that? I remember, like talking, you know, like, oh, because we didn't. And it was, it's like we found and then we corrected it, as she said, we did. And now, we asked more questions, more religion questions in our demographic one, because we found it so fascinating, and so impactful. So, so I think your assumption is probably borne out, at least from my, you know, my case of many, many years of doing this.

Chip Gruen: 48:18

So, and again, I know that I my perspective is very limited on the work that you do, right, I see it from as a consumer of polls and polling data. And, you know, from talking to you and other people in the field, but but I don't have a obviously the insider's view on all this. So, with that being said, what am I missing? Like, what is the really important thing that I might not be able to see from my perspective about, about what public opinion research looks like? How it it thinks about some of these issues? Like, where's my blind spot here?

Chris Borick: 48:56

Yeah, I don't know if you have a big blind spot, Chip, you know, from at least our last, you know, 45 minutes of discussion, you seem to have a pretty good, good, good feel for it, you know, maybe where we started, it takes us back to the challenges, right, it is, it is a really challenging time, I've been doing this for over a quarter of a century. And I look back at when I started, and boy, that was at least relatively easy to do. It's harder now. There's, it's just, it takes a lot more time takes a lot more money to do it right. So there's more challenges. There's also some more opportunities to, to be able to field studies and reach people through you know, online platforms and other things that are opening up and we're exploring all of those at the at the Institute for our next stage for however long, you know, we we roll, and I think it's just you know, being attentive the thing I say to consumers of public opinion research is be attentive to the methods and the track record of the organization's you look at. There's a kind of proliferation of people that say they're doing polling or public opinion research. And that, you know, sometimes new folks are doing it great, and other times I, you know, I have some questions about their transparency, and what they're doing and how they're arriving at their conclusions. And so be good, be good consumers, like you are of anything else of the type of of data that you receive, that measures what the public thinks and believes.

Chip Gruen: 50:34

All right. Well, I think that that is a great place to wrap it up. Thank you very much for appearing on ReligionWise. We really appreciate your perspective on this.

Chris Borick: 50:41

It was such a pleasure. Chip thanks for having me aboard, it's a great, great honor.

Chip Gruen: 50:48

This has been ReligionWise a podcast produced by the Institute for Religious and Cultural Understanding of Muhlenberg College. ReligionWise is produced and directed by Christine Flicker. For more information about additional programming, or to make an inquiry about a speaking engagement, please visit our website at religionandculture.com. There you'll find our contact information, links to other programming and have the opportunity to support the work of the Institute. Please subscribe to ReligionWise wherever you get your podcasts. We look forward to seeing you next time.