(RNS) — There are more Latino voters in the U.S. than ever. As reporters and pundits seek to understand this important voting bloc, they’re digging into the faith of Hispanic communities. But as this election cycle brings yet another flurry of trend pieces about Latino evangelicals, some narratives distort the big picture of Latino faith. Others are just myths.
Here’s what you may not know about Latino voters and their faith:
The Share of U.S. Latino Adults Who Are Evangelical Has Been Relatively Steady in the Last Decade.
Many trend pieces about Latino voters claim that there has been a significant spike in the Latino evangelical population. However, that narrative doesn’t bear out in the polling.
In 2022, Pew Research Center found that 15% of U.S. Latino adults were evangelical, the same percentage that was evangelical in 2012. In the years in between, that statistic has dropped to 14% or been as high as 19%.
“Steady decline in share of U.S. Latinos who identify as Catholic” (Graphic courtesy of Pew Research Center)
The Public Religion Research Institute found in 2013 that Hispanic Protestants, a category that also includes nonevangelicals such as mainline Christians, made up 3% of Americans. In 2023, those numbers grew to 4%.
The small growth PRRI has tracked comes as the overall number of U.S. Latinos is growing, as is the share of the U.S. population that they represent. In 2022, Latinos made up nearly 1 in 5 Americans, up from 16% in 2010.
This growth does not translate to a significantly expanding Latino evangelical population, yet this misunderstanding persists.
A segment on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Sept. 5 broadcast that narrative, with journalist Paola Ramos saying, “You even have some scholars like Mark Mulder from Calvin University that predict that by 2030 over 50% of Latinos will identify as evangelical.”
In an email, Mulder told RNS that Ramos had misquoted a prediction he and others made in a 2017 book that included all Latino Protestants, a larger category.
Asked whether he stood by that prediction in 2024, Mulder pointed out that the book had been written in 2015, almost a decade ago. “Right now, no, that does not seem plausible,” he wrote.
A December 2023 poll by PRRI also found that Hispanic Protestants’ net gain in membership is relatively small. Only 1.4% of the U.S. population has become Hispanic Protestant after growing up with a different childhood religion, but 0.9% of those raised Hispanic Protestants have left the faith.
In polling released in August, PRRI found that younger Latino adults in both the 18-29 and 30-49 age cohorts were more likely to be Protestant than older generations, a trend that has held over the last decade.
