Belief in "War on Christmas" Bigger Than Ever Nationally

MADISON, N.J., Dec. 2, 2021 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- More Americans believe that there is a "war on Christmas" this holiday season than in years past, with nearly 4 in 10 (37 percent) Americans now saying that politicians are trying to remove the religious elements of the Holiday season, up from 29 percent in 2013. At the same time, the percent of Americans who "strongly disagree" that there is a war on Christmas has declined from a majority (54 percent) in 2013, to 37 percent today. According to a new national survey from the FDU Poll, this increase is driven by Republicans, Trump supporters, and, surprisingly, Hispanic Americans.

"The 'War on Christmas' narrative is appealing because it lets Christians lay a claim to victimhood," said Dan Cassino, a professor of Government and Politics at Fairleigh Dickinson, and the executive director of the poll. "If you're part of a group that's been dominant for hundreds of years, movements towards equality tend to feel like discrimination."

Since the FDU Poll first measured the phenomenon in 2013, belief in the War on Christmas has grown significantly. Today, 37 percent of Americans agree that there has "been a concerted effort on the part of some politicians to take 'Christ' out of 'Christmas,'" up from 29 percent in 2013.

The biggest driver of this change has been increasing support for the idea among Republicans, and especially among Trump supporters. Belief among Democrats and independents has not changed significantly in the last eight years, but today, 2 out of 3 (66 percent) Republicans agree with the War on Christmas idea, up from 40 percent in 2013.

Evangelical or "born again" Christians (54 percent) are more likely to believe in a war on Christmas than those who don't hold those religious views (29 percent), but the best predictor of belief in the war on Christmas is vote choice in the 2020 US Presidential election. Fully 71 percent of those who say that they voted for Trump in 2020 agree that there is a "war on Christmas," compared to just 14 percent of Biden supporters. A majority of Trump supporters (51 percent) "strongly" agree with the sentiment.

"Trump made this claim a centerpiece of his Presidential campaigns and in the speeches he gave at rallies," said Cassino. "His embrace of the war on Christmas narrative has made it an article of faith for his supporters."

But the change in belief doesn't come from just Trump supporters and Republicans. Also coming around to believing in the War on Christmas are Hispanic and Latino Americans. In the 2013 poll, just 9 percent of Hispanics said that they agreed with the War on Christmas statement, and only 1 percent said that they agreed "strongly." Today, 39 percent of Hispanics think there is a War on Christmas, and 1 in 4 (25 percent) "strongly agree" with the statement.

Older Americans are also much more likely to believe in the War on Christmas than they were in the past. Belief among Americans under 45 has stayed stable over the past eight years (24 percent agreement among 18- to 29-year-olds, and 35 percent among 30-44 in both surveys), but belief among older cohorts has shot up. Today, 35 percent of Americans 65 and older say that there's a war on Christmas, alongside half (49 percent) of Americans 45 to 64. In 2013, just 26 percent of voters 45 and over said the same.

"The war on Christmas is a central example of how divided our culture has become," said Cassino. "Republicans and Democrats are living in two different worlds, seeing different threats, so it's no surprise they have trouble agreeing on just about anything."

The modern American belief in a "war on Christmas" goes back to a 2005 book by a Fox News contributor, and a segment on Bill O'Reilly's Fox News program discussing that book. It was picked up and repeated many times that year, and in subsequent years, on Fox News programs, and spread through online conservative channels. Mentions of it in conservative news sources had decreased substantially until former President Trump began discussing it in interviews and in speeches.

Methodology

The survey was conducted between November 9 and November 16, 2021, using a certified list of registered voters in Nationwide. Respondents were randomly chosen from the list, and contacted via either live caller telephone interviews, or text-to-web surveys sent to cellular phones, resulting in an overall sample of 802 respondents. 416 of the surveys were carried out via the TTW platform, 128 of the interviews were carried out via landline telephones, and the remainder (280) were done on cellular phones. Surveys were conducted only in English.

The data were weighted to be representative of the population of registered voters nationwide, as of the 2020 US Presidential election. The weights used, like all weights, balance the demographic characteristics of the sample to match known population parameters. The weighted results used here are balanced to match parameters for sex, age, education and race/ethnicity.

SPSSINC RAKE, an SPSS extension module that simultaneously balances the distributions of all variables using the GENLOG procedure, was used to produce final weights. Weights were trimmed to prevent individual interviews from having too much influence on the final results. The use of these weights in statistical analysis helps to ensure that the demographic characteristics of the sample approximate the demographic characteristics of the target population. The size of these weights is used to construct the measure of design effects, which indicate the extent to which the reported results are being driven by the weights applied to the data, rather than found in the data itself. Simply put, these design effects tell us how many additional respondents would have been needed to get the weighted number of respondents across weighted categories: larger design effects indicate greater levels of under-representation in the data. In this case, calculated design effects are approximately 1.42.

All surveys are subject to sampling error, which is the expected probable difference between interviewing everyone in a population versus a scientific sampling drawn from that population. Sampling error should be adjusted to recognize the effect of weighting the data to better match the population. In this poll, the simple sampling error for 802 registered voters is +/-3.5 percentage points, at a 95 percent confidence interval. Including the design effects, the margin of error would be +/-4.6 percentage points, though the figure not including them is much more commonly reported.

This error calculation does not take into account other sources of variation inherent in public opinion studies, such as non-response, question-wording, differences in translated forms, or context effects. While such errors are known to exist, they are often unquantifiable within a particular survey, and all efforts, such as randomization and extensive pre-testing of items, have been used to minimize them.

Questions and survey tables can be found here.

Media Contact

Dan Cassino, Fairleigh Dickinson University, 973.896.7072, [email protected]

SOURCE Fairleigh Dickinson University