By NATE COHN and KEVIN QUEALY OCT. 5, 2017, New York Times
[Original article contains maps and links]
Americans are deeply split along demographic lines, but there aren’t many
demographic characteristics that embody America’s cultural divide better than
gun ownership.
image from
In the wake of the mass shooting in Las Vegas on Sunday, the polling firm
SurveyMonkey published a pair of maps from its 2016 presidential election
2016 presidential election vote exit polls. It showed the electoral maps for
voters who said they had a gun in their home, and for those who said they did not.
In every state but Vermont – perhaps the most liberal state in the country, but
one where Democrats, including Bernie Sanders, often support gun rights –
voters who reported living in a gun-owning household overwhelmingly backed
Donald J. Trump.
The opposite is true for voters who said they did not live in a home with a gun.
In all but one state that could be measured, voters overwhelmingly preferred
Hillary Clinton. (The exception was West Virginia; not enough data existed for
Wyoming.)
Over all, gun-owning households (roughly a third in America) backed Mr.
Trump by 63 percent to 31 percent, while households without guns backed
Mrs. Clinton, 65 percent to 30 percent, according to SurveyMonkey data.
No other demographic characteristic created such a consistent geographic split.
Comparable to the Racial Divide
American politics is deeply divided by race, and the gap between white and
nonwhite voters is similar to the gap between households with guns and those
without. But Mrs. Clinton won white voters, often by a wide margin, in 10
states and Washington, D.C., worth 139 electoral votes in all. And Mr. Trump
may have been competitive among nonwhite voters in a few conservative
states, like Oklahoma. (The poll data among nonwhite voters is sparse in
several small states and subject to a considerable margin of sampling error.)
The split among white voters without a college degree and the rest of the
country is also distinct. But Mr. Trump would have probably won without
white working-class voters in several states, particularly in the Great Plains,
according to the SurveyMonkey data.
This is not to say that gun ownership is a bigger divide in American politics
than race or the combination of race and education, or a bigger driver of
America’s political divide. After all, part of the reason gun ownership splits
voters so starkly is because gun owners are more likely than Americans
generally to be white, less educated and living in a rural area. Over all, 83
percent of gun household voters were white in 2016, according to the
SurveyMonkey data.
But it might not be merely demographics. Mr. Trump appeared to fare better in
the SurveyMonkey data among gun-owning households than non-gun-owning
households even after considering the voters’ race and education. He won
white voters without a degree who lived in gun-owning households by 74
percent to 21 percent. He even won college-educated white voters in gunowning
households, 60-34, and fared better among nonwhite voters in gun
households, losing, 61-34. Mrs. Clinton won nonwhite voters over all, 75-21.
Even so, education, race and religion tend to do a better job of predicting an
individual’s presidential vote choice. It is probably fair to say that gun
ownership embodies America’s partisan divide more than it drives it.
[JB emphasis]
The Urban-Rural Divide
For that same reason, density also comes close to approximating the divide
between households with guns and those without. Not only does it correlate
with gun ownership, but it also correlates with race and education.
Marriage
Marriage rates are also correlated to today’s political divide. Unmarried adults
are likelier to be young and nonwhite, and concentrated in urban areas. But it’s
not as strongly tied to a political issue. In this respect, gun ownership is unique
among the demographic or household characteristics considered so far.
Other categories that blur the line between demographics and issue politics –
like religion, union membership and military service – don’t yield such a
pronounced split.
Religious divisions
Religiosity – how often someone goes to church – has been a strong predictor
of party affiliation, with frequent churchgoers much more likely to be be
Republicans. The political preferences of more religious Americans yield a
deeply red map, with religious voters from just three (relatively large) states –
California, New York and Maryland – preferring Mrs. Clinton. Nonwhite
voters most likely represent a disproportionate share of Democratic-leaning
religious voters in many of these states.
On the flip side of this relationship are the religious “nones,” a large and
growing group of voters who are atheist or do not identify with a religion.
These voters tend to be younger than the overall electorate, one reason they
strongly preferred Mrs. Clinton in 2016.
Union membership
A few decades ago, union households might have been a more salient
demographic category than gun-owning households. Like gun ownership,
union membership was directly tied to a major political issue and it strongly
correlated with the crucial demographic and political splits of the time. Union
households are still much likelier to vote Democratic, but they no longer
symbolize the divide in American politics.
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