Republicans Represent A Minority Of Americans Out Of Step With Modern America

We live in a divided nation. And, Republicans belong to a dying American culture deeply out of step with the rest of the nation, that wields outsized political power anyway. This is something that the 6-3 conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court has brought to a head. 

Similarly, but for gerrymanding inherent in the design of the U.S. Senate, Democrats would have a safe majority there, and wouldn't find their legislative initiatives blocks as they are in today's 50-50 Senate, despite the fact that they control the U.S. House, the U.S. Senate, and the Presidency.

If our broken political institutions didn't magnify this loud minority's political power, we would be living in a country with a profoundly different set of laws.

White Christians, who constituted a majority of Americans for most of the nation’s history, have fallen to about 44 percent of the total as the nation has grown more demographically and religiously diverse, according to the latest PRRI national data. But in PRRI surveys, about two-thirds of Republicans still identify as white Christians (a level last reached for the country overall in the mid-1990s). In 25 states, white Christians now constitute 49 percent of the population or more, per the PRRI’s findings. In 2020, Donald Trump won 18 of them. Those same states elected 37 of the 50 Republican senators. . . . 

Trump in 2020 won only two of the 20 states with the highest percentage of foreign-born residents, according to census figures, and Republicans hold only four of their 40 Senate seats. The GOP tilts toward the places least affected by immigration: Trump won 17 of the 20 states with the lowest share of foreign-born residents, and those same states elected 33 of the 50 GOP senators. Combined, those 20 low-immigration states account for only a little more than one-fifth of the nation’s total population. . . . 

Republicans dominate the states with the fewest college graduates but struggle in those with the most, as well as in the states where the highest share of the workforce is employed in science, engineering, and computer occupations, all defining industries of the new knowledge economy. The 22 states with the biggest share of such workers have elected just six Republican senators, while fully 31 of the GOP’s Senate caucus represent the 20 states with the smallest share of such employment, according to census figures. Republicans are much stronger in states that rely on the powerhouse industries of the 20th century: agriculture, energy extraction, and manufacturing. . .  .

although two-thirds of Republicans say abortion should be illegal in all or most circumstances, 70 percent of all other Americans say it should remain legal in all or most cases. 

While a 55 percent majority of Republicans say small-business owners should be permitted to deny service to same-sex couples on religious grounds, almost three-fourths of everyone else disagrees. 

And while about three-fourths of Republicans say discrimination against white people is now as big a problem as bias against Black people, more than two-thirds of everyone else rejects that idea.

From the Atlantic magazine.