The Pulpit and the Polls: The Electoral Impact of Religious Participation

Angela Cools, Jonathan Moreno-Medina and Sam Sheng
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Jonathan Moreno-Medina: University of Texas at San Antonio

No ahky7_v1, SocArXiv from Center for Open Science

Abstract: We estimate how exposure to religious services affects U.S. voting. Novel sermon corpora show a sharp spike in political content on the Sunday before presidential elections. Exploiting quasi-random rainfall during typical service hours before elections—Precipitation at Time of Church (PTC)—and controlling for election day and weekly precipitation, a one–standard deviation increase in PTC lowers county Republican vote share by 0.6 percentage points. The effect is driven by reduced Republican turnout. Individual-level estimates confirm that effects concentrate among church-attending Christians—particularly White Evangelicals—and are absent for non-churchgoers who face the same weather, consistent with church-based mobilization.

Date: 2026-03-17
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm and nep-pol
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:osf:socarx:ahky7_v1

DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/ahky7_v1

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