“A majority of Americans believe in both heaven and hell, including 74% of Republicans and 50% of Democrats. But about a third (35%) of Democrats say that they do not believe in either heaven or hell, compared with just 14% of Republicans who say this. In fact, when given the option to express belief in some sort of afterlife aside from either heaven or hell, a quarter of all Democrats say that they do not believe in any afterlife at all, which is much higher than the share of Republicans who express the same view (9%),” Pew Research Assistant Justin Nortey said in the report.
The religious composition of the two parties, namely that a substantially higher share of Republicans identify as Christians than Democrats, helps explain the findings, Nortey said. While self-identified Christian members of both major political parties believe in some form of an afterlife, Democrats without religious affiliation are far more likely to believe in no sort of afterlife than religiously unaffiliated Republicans, Nortey added.
Democrats who believe in heaven are also more likely to say that those who do not believe in God can gain entry there than Republicans who believe in it, Nortey pointed out.
Similarly, Christian Republicans are roughly twice as likely as their Democrat counterparts to say that their religion is the “one true faith” leading to heaven, Nortey said.
The survey used to gather the report’s data was administered online to 6,485 randomly sampled US adults in September 2021.