Switching parties in Trump’s America

AMERICANS ARE “restless in the midst of abundance,” Alexis de Tocqueville observed, continually changing their track “for fear of missing the shortest cut to happiness.” This sense that something better might be around the next corner is visible in choices over where to live: despite a recent decline, Americans are still much more likely than the French to migrate within their own country. It also shows up in the realm of the sacred. Episcopalians become evangelicals, Catholics leave their childhood faith and sometimes come back, Muslims become atheists.

One part of life where this restlessness does not apply is politics. Almost everyone who voted for Donald Trump in 2016 had voted for Mitt Romney four years earlier, just as almost everyone who voted for Hillary Clinton had previously voted for Barack Obama. People who vote tend to settle on a party with which they identify in young adulthood, then stick with it. By contrast, half of American adults have switched religious denomination at some point, according to the Pew Research Centre. The datasets do not line up in a way that makes the conjecture possible to prove, but it is a fair bet that, at least among those most engaged in politics, Americans are more likely to change their religion than to change their party.