The conventional wisdom is that the individualist, evangelical style of American religion is a strong antidote to socialism. If faith alone can lead you to salvation, then efforts to reshape society are beside the point. But the animosity between them has been more pointed, especially regarding so called “Godless communists” who portrayed religion as the “opiate of the masses.” In these data, those who agreed that social problems would be resolved if enough people had a personal relationship with God were 20 percent less socialist than those who disagreed. A worldview that pits faith directly against collective action explains clearly why collectivist efforts have traditionally foundered in the U.S.

By the same token, Americans who are not religious (sometimes called the Nones)2 would be those most likely to hold socialist values. And indeed, this is what we find: Nones are 10 percent more socialist, on average, than religious Americans. The gap is greater among older people (15 percentage points at retirement age) and smaller among the young (5 percentage points at 18-24), perhaps because younger people are exposed to many more Nones and to greater economic insecurity than their elders. In what may be seen as a cruel irony given Sanders’s difficulty with black voters, there is no such gap among nonwhite respondents — support for socialist values is high across the board. Even more, nonwhite respondents favor socialist values at equivalent levels as white Nones.