The Atlantic Also Wonders Why Support Among Republicans is Dropping

David A. Graham, of The Atlantic, also wonders why support is dropping among Republicans for Evolutionary theory.  He writes:

One possibility is that respondents who identified as Republican and believed in evolution in 2009 are no longer identifying as Republicans. Fewer scientists, for example, are reportedly identifying with the GOP, and the overall trend is for fewer Americans to call themselves Republicans. But both Gallup and separate polling from Pew found approximately the same party ID in 2009 and 2013.

Another is that the rise of "intelligent design" education has helped to swing younger Americans against evolution. Yet the age breakdown remains similar in 2009 and 2013, with respondents ages 18 to 29 most likely to believe in evolution.

What does that leave? Maybe the gap represents an emotional response by Republicans to being out of power. Among others, Chris Mooney has argued that beliefs on politically contentious topics are often more rooted in opposition to perceived attacks than anything else—an instance of "motivated reasoning." Given that Democrats have controlled the White House and Senate since 2009, this could be backlash to the political climate, though it will be hard to tell until Republicans control Washington again.

Given that people do not tend to change their religious perspectives based on who is in office, I do not think this is it, either.  Something is being missed here. I think it is possible that the rise in Republicans who reject evolution is being influenced, at least in part, by the uptick in the number of self-described conservatives being home schooled.  From an Education News story in March:

More than 2 million children around the U.S. are homeschooled, a number that is 75% higher than it was in 1999. And the number is expected not just to grow, but to grow exponentially over the next decade — especially since the advent of free virtual public schools and quality curriculum all around the country.

While the story is quick to point out that the parents of these children are increasingly choosing this route not just because of religious reasons, conservative Christians are still vastly the bulk of those being home schooling.  I have found very few home school curricula that do not exude antipathy toward evolution.  This  has been the case for some time. Arguing against this perspective is the fact that a higher percentage of younger people accept evolution.  However, we don't know about the educational breakdown, apart from "did you graduate from college or not?"  How many of those evangelical protestants that reject evolution were home schooled?  It would be nice to know.  In any event, however, it can only be one factor of many due to the relatively small number of children involved.  The reasons behind the drop in support are likely multifaceted.

BTW: there is one very unusual response collected by the poll that I missed the first time around.  Among self-described mainline protestants that accept evolutionary theory, 36% think that evolution was guided by God and 36% think that God was not involved.  If you are a self-described mainline protestant in the second batch, how does that work exactly?  You believe in God but you don't think He has acted in the evolution of biodiversity on the planet?  What does He do?

Pew Poll: Views on Evolution Driven By Religion More Than Education?

Sarah Pulliam Bailey writes for the Salt Lake Tribune and suggests that, buried in the Pew poll on evolution, religious affiliation is a much greater predictor of evolution acceptance than education.  She writes:

While education matters, the new analysis suggests that religion appears to have more influence than level of education on evolution. The 21-point difference between college graduates and high school graduates who believe in evolution, for example, is less stark than the 49-point difference between mainline Protestants and evangelicals.

Evangelicals are four times as likely to reject human evolution as mainline Protestants, with 64 percent of evangelicals saying that "humans have existed in their present form since the beginning of time." Half of black Protestants say humans have not evolved, compared to 15 percent of white mainline Protestants who share the same opinion.

Those with more years of formal education are more likely than those with less education to say that humans and animals have evolved over time. Seventy-two percent of college graduates say humans have evolved over time, compared with 51 percent of high school graduates who say the same thing.

The problem with this analysis, of course, is that there is no one-to-one correlation. How many of the mainline protestants are college graduates?  How many of the evangelicals?  Unless you can isolate those patterns, you cannot say for sure if this is an accurate analysis. 

Acceptance of Evolution Drops Among Republicans

The Pew Forum has released the results of a new poll that seem to indicate that acceptance of evolution has stayed relatively unchanged in most demographics since 2009.  Among Republicans, however, it has dropped.  They write:

About half of those who express a belief in human evolution take the view that evolution is “due to natural processes such as natural selection” (32% of the American public overall). But many Americans believe that God or a supreme being played a role in the process of evolution. Indeed, roughly a quarter of adults (24%) say that “a supreme being guided the evolution of living things for the purpose of creating humans and other life in the form it exists today.”

These beliefs differ strongly by religious group. White evangelical Protestants are particularly likely to believe that humans have existed in their present form since the beginning of time. Roughly two-thirds (64%) express this view, as do half of black Protestants (50%). By comparison, only 15% of white mainline Protestants share this opinion.

There also are sizable differences by party affiliation in beliefs about evolution, and the gap between Republicans and Democrats has grown. In 2009, 54% of Republicans and 64% of Democrats said humans have evolved over time, a difference of 10 percentage points. Today, 43% of Republicans and 67% of Democrats say humans have evolved, a 24-point gap.

Other items of interest revealed in the poll:

• It did not seem to matter whether or not the questions focused on humans or other animals in terms of acceptance of evolution
• men accepted evolution more than women (65% to 55%)
• College graduates had higher rates of acceptance than people with high school education or less (72% to 51%)
• younger respondents had much higher rates of acceptance than retirement age people (68% to 49%)

It is not a surprise that Republicans are moving away from evolution.  The party as a whole has beeen pushing away from that position for years and most of the recent Republican presidential candidates had (usually uninformed) anti-evolutionary position.  Only Jon Huntsman and Mitt Romney deviated from this view.  As the public schools continue to degrade and more conservatives tune out public education in favor of home schooling, the acceptance rate will continue to drop and I predict a greater partisan discrepancy three years from now.