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Pew Research Center released a new survey of President Joe Biden’s job performance on Thursday, broken down by religious group affiliation. The Pew poll is the latest in a string of surveys with bad news from the president. “Overall, 20% of American adults say Biden will be a successful president, while roughly twice that share (43%) say he will be unsuccessful and 37% say it is too early to tell,” the poll found. Black Protestants are the religious group most likely to believe Biden will be a successful president, with 35 percent reporting optimism. They are followed by Hispanic Catholics...

Black Americans attend church more regularly than Americans overall, and pray more often. Most attend churches that are predominantly black, yet many would like those congregations to become racially diverse. There is broad respect for black churches’ historical role in seeking racial equality, coupled with a widespread perception they have lost influence in recent decades. Those are among the key findings in a comprehensive report released Tuesday by the Pew Research Center, which surveyed 8,660 black adults across the United States about their religious experiences. It is Pew’s first large-scale survey on the topic. Among black adults who go to...

New Pew Religion Research: Rising ‘Nones’, Collapsing Middle, Growing Polarization Pew Research Center has just released a new survey:“In U.S., Decline of Christianity Continues at Rapid Pace.” It looks bad. Over the past decade, the number of people who identify as Christians has dropped from 77% to 65%. The “nones,” those who claim no religious affiliation, have increased from 12% to 17% in that time.What’s really declining here, though? What’s continuing to drop, in particular? Pew’s been talking about the “rise of the nones” since at least 2009 — but is Christianity going away? No. Just nominal Christianity.Research in 2015...

Americans view made-up news and information as a bigger problem than other critical issues, including terrorism, immigration, climate change and racism, according to a new survey from Pew Research Center... ...While most Americans blame political leaders and activist groups for creating misinformation over journalists, most say "the news media" is the most responsible for fixing the problem. {Ha!!! See poster's comment} Republicans blame journalists more for the issue than Democrats, according to the survey. {See poster's comment}

Republicans and Democrats don’t just disagree on the issues, though of course they do. Americans are divided on which issues are important in the first place. That was the unmistakable finding of a new survey from the Pew Research Center. The research outfit polled 10,000 Americans, about a month before the 2018 midterms. The survey found that, when you break Americans out by political party, they often have totally different notions about what the biggest issues facing the country are. This chart sums it up better than I ever could: on race, on climate change, on gun violence, on illegal...

For some time now, surveys have shown that younger Americans are less likely than older adults to attend church, believe in God, or say religion is important to them. Such a religion age gap doesn’t exist in every country, but a new Pew Research Center study shows that it is far from unique to the United States. In fact, in 46 countries around the world, adults under age 40 are less likely to say religion is “very important” in their lives than are older adults; the opposite is true in only two countries. In 58 countries, there are no significant...

A majority of Republicans in a new survey think colleges and universities have a negative effect on the U.S. The Pew Research Center poll finds 58 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents think colleges and universities hurt the country. Just 36 percent of Republicans think they have a positive effect. In contrast, a large majority of Democrats, 72 percent, say colleges and universities have a positive effect on the country. Overall, slightly more than half of the public, 55 percent, thinks colleges and universities help the U.S., according to the survey. …

Arizona – -(Ammoland.com)-Pew Research has released a poll taken in the middle of 2016. Note that the Orlando night club massacre and the massive media hype calling for a ban on “assault weapons” occurred one third of the way through the survey period for police.  The shooting of five police officers in Dallas, with a rifle, occurred half way through the survey period.The public survey was conducted two months after the Orlando Pulse shooting, at the height of the establishment media demonization of “assault weapons”, and one month after the shooting of five officers in Dallas. The poll is more...

Normally, with an issue as complex as immigration, it’s hard to pinpoint any one thing that’s driving a notable shift in opinion. Unless there’s a sudden surge at the border, as there was in the summer of 2014 with children from Central America being sent north via Mexico, there’s no obvious reason for public opinion to change dramatically within a narrow six-month window, as it has here. In fact, if you’d asked me to guess whether support for the wall was up or down lately, I’d guess up for the simple reason that Americans are more worried about terrorism...

That’s a particularly tasty bit from the new Pew poll on religious views in America, always one of the richest cultural surveys of the year. Two caveats, though. One: “Unaffiliated” is not a synonym for “agnostic” or “atheist.” Most people who call themselves “unaffiliated” believe in God. The word means just what it says, that the person doesn’t adhere to any one faith at the moment. Two: “Unaffiliated” is the largest Democratic religious demographic only if you divide Christianity among its component groups, i.e. Catholics, mainline Protestants, evangelical Protests, historically black Protestants, and others. As a group, Democrats are...

Every few months Pew cranks out a poll showing GOPers surprisingly warm to the idea of letting illegals stay, and every few months we scratch our heads and try to make sense of the numbers. I gave it my best shot back in June, the last time they surveyed this issue. Ask Republicans about various aspects of immigration and on most them you’ll see just the sort of border hawkishness you’d expect. They think that legal status for illegals rewards wrongdoing; they think immigrants are more likely to burden the country than benefit it; and a plurality would prefer...

It’s October. Here are the latest national results from the Pew Research Center. 1. Donald Trump: 25% 2. Ben Carson: 16% 3. Carly Fiorina: 8% 3. Marco Rubio: 8% 5. Ted Cruz: 6% 6. Jeb Bush: 4% 7. Mike Huckabee: 2% 7. Rand Paul: 2% The remaining candidates are at 1% or below in the Pew findings. (Note, this is the first survey of the cycle from the Pew Research Center, so I didn’t include figures as to whether the candidates’ support was increasing or decreasing.) In addition to Trump’s role as the frontrunner – a role he hasn’t relinquished...

Four percent, guys. To put that in perspective, Scott Walker was still pulling five percent in one poll released less than a week before he dropped out of the race.Every now and then, just for a fleeting moment or two, I put away my fatalism and consider that maybe the Republican establishment can’t nominate anyone it wants. And then the moment passes and I return to reality.As for Trump, there’s been a raging debate for the past three months between people who think his surge is due to a cocktail of populism, “white identity politics,” and sheer alpha-male bravado...

Over 50 percent of Americans raised in the Catholic Church say they've left the faith at some point in their lives, according to a Pew Research survey on religion and public life. The data further revealed that among the 52 percent who left the Church, about six out of 10 have returned at some point. Two-thirds of the group that left the Church now consider themselves ex-Catholics and no-longer identify with the faith. Around 13 percent, however, still identify as Catholic, but no longer practice the religion. For those who are still practicing, around 73 percent said they've been in...

This analysis is by Michael Lipka, an editor focusing on religion at Pew Research Center. The nation’s population is growing more racially and ethnically diverse – and so are many of its religious groups, both at the congregational level and among broader Christian traditions. But a new analysis of data from the 2014 Religious Landscape Study also finds that these levels of diversity vary widely within U.S. religious groups. We looked at 29 groups – including Protestant denominations, other religious groups and three subsets of people who are religiously unaffiliated – based on a methodology used in our 2014 Pew...

Even before the killing of four Marines in Chattanooga, Tenn., in an "act of terrorism," Americans revealed a deep concern about Islamic extremism and a very high worry about ISIS, according to the latest poll from Pew Research.

They’re not the only group still opposed, of course — senior citizens and white evangelicals also say no to SSM — but they’re the only group that’s under intense partisan pressure to conform that’s still resisting. When Obama announced his support for gay marriage in 2012, at least one poll showed a sea change in black opinion in the aftermath, from 41 percent in favor to 59 percent virtually overnight. One 2012 exit poll found 51 percent support for SSM among blacks versus 41 percent opposition. Pew’s polls over the years have found that black support did increase noticeably...

The big story this week from Pew Research Center's report, "America's Changing Religious Landscape," was the sharp decline in the number of Christians and large growth in those who are unaffiliated with any religion. Digging deeper, the report contains interesting news about Evangelicals. Here are 10 interesting facts about Evangelicals from the report: 1. The number of Evangelicals likely increased. Evangelicals were the only segment of Christianity that likely saw growth. Evangelicals added about two million to their fold from 2007 to 2014. Taking the margin of error into account, the actual increase could be anywhere between zero and five...

On Tuesday, Pew Research released a new study finding a radical increase in the number of religiously unaffiliated Americans. That increase correlated strongly with the decrease in the number of Catholics, mainline Protestants, and evangelical Protestants over the past seven years.

Contrary to recent reports based on studies that emphasize the growth of non-religious people in the United States and the decline of church attendance, Christianity in America is not dying, according to a new survey that examines the nuances and complexities of how people self-identify with faith by Waco,Texas-based Baylor University. Scholars from Baylor University's Institute of Religion said during a recent conference that reports highlighting the departure of millenials from the organized religion of their parents are being greatly exaggerated. "There's a story some people want to report — that religion is on life support — but it's just...