Monday, June 16, 2014

Atheists and Muslims may have a few things in common in the US

by Salman Hameed

The Pew Research Center has a new survey out that looks at the growing political polarization in the US. One of the questions asked if one would be happy if a family member married an atheist, and another question asked about a similar marriage to born-again Christian". Well, roughly half of all Americans (49%) say they will be unhappy if a family member married an atheists, and only 9% unhappy with a born-again Christian (including most atheists). Here are the results divided up by religious (and non-religious) denominations:

Now the Pew survey also asked about a member of another religious faith. But I was wondering how the numbers would look like for a family member marrying a Muslim. My guess is that they won't be that different from atheists. Here is a Gallup poll from earlier this year that showed that Americans are least likely to vote a Muslim or an and atheist for President:


This is the reason I think it will be interesting to see the marriage question for Muslims as well. I should add that this is also a temporary thing, as the same Gallup poll showed that the acceptability for atheists and Muslims go up for the younger generation.

Back to the Pew Survey. Here is the Pew marriage question again and now divided by political leanings:


Perhaps not too surprisingly, liberals (as defined in the survey) place importance on ethnic diversity, whereas conservatives lean towards a similar faith community when picking a place to live:


You can read the full Pew report here.

1 comments:

Ismail N said...

Well... it seems that they still prefer Muslims over Atheists.

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