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Mirroring changes in the U.S. population overall, registered voters have become more educated, more racially and ethnically diverse, older, and more religiously diverse over the past three decades.

Many of these changes have altered the makeup of both parties, but several have had a more pronounced impact on the Democratic Party than the Republican Party.

As the United States has become more racially and ethnically diverse, so too has the electorate.

Today, 67% of registered voters are White, 13% are Hispanic, 11% are Black and 4% are Asian. In 1996, when President Bill Clinton was running for reelection, 85% of voters were White, 4% were Hispanic, 9% were Black and about 1% were Asian.

Both parties are more racially and ethnically diverse than three decades ago, but not to the same degree. There has been more change in the composition of the Democratic coalition than the Republican coalition.

The electorate has grown older in recent decades. Currently, about six-in-ten voters are ages 50 and older (29% are 50 to 64 and 29% are 65 and older). By comparison, 41% of voters were 50 and older in 1996.

Reflecting this broader change, both parties voters are significantly older now than they were 20 years ago. But today Republican and Republican-leaning voters tend to be older than voters in the Democratic coalition. (In 1996, there was very little difference between the age profiles of the two parties.)

The share of voters with a bachelors degree or more has increased significantly among registered voters since 1996, from about a quarter (24%) to four-in-ten today.

Voters with a high school degree or less education have declined roughly in parallel, so that now about three-in-ten have a high school degree or less (28%), compared with nearly half (47%) in 1996. The share of voters with some college experience but no bachelors degree has remained relatively stable across this period (32% today, 29% in 1996).

The dual trends of increasing education levels and increasing racial and ethnic diversity over the last three decades have resulted in dramatic changes to the electoral landscape.

White voters without a bachelors degree remain the largest single group of voters across education levels, race and ethnicity. But where they once represented a clear majority (63%) in 1996, they are now about four-in-ten voters overall (38%).

Overall, about two-in-ten voters are Hispanic (9%), Black (7%) or Asian (2%) and without a bachelors degree.

Non-Hispanic White adults with a bachelors degree or more represent 28% of voters today, which is up modestly since 1996 (21%). Approximately one-in-ten registered voters are Hispanic (3%), Black (3%) or Asian (3%) and have bachelors degrees.

The Democratic Party does not have a single dominant bloc of voters across education levels, race and ethnicity.

Americans have become less Christian and less religious in recent decades, and the electorate reflects those changes. Two-thirds of voters identify with a Christian denomination, while about a quarter say they are religiously unaffiliated (26%). Fifteen years ago, about eight-in-ten voters were Christians (79%) and 15% were unaffiliated. (We used different questions about religious affiliation prior to 2008, so comparable data only goes back 15 years.)

These broader trends of declining shares of Christians and increasing shares of religious nones have impacted the demographic composition of the two parties coalitions in diverging ways.

Among GOP voters, the shares who identify as White evangelical Protestants (30% now, 33% in 2008) and White Catholics (18% now and in 2008) are little changed over the past 15 years. White nonevangelical Protestants have declined as a share of Republican and Republican-leaning voters from 22% to 15% over the same period, while religious nones have grown from 9% to 15% of GOP voters.

Today, White evangelical (5%) and White nonevangelical Protestants (10%) are 15% of the Democratic coalition, down from 28% 15 years ago. The share of Democratically aligned voters who are Black Protestants has changed very little over this period (15% then to 14% now).

The electorate continues to have more voters who call themselves conservative than call themselves liberal. About a quarter of voters say they are liberal (16%) or very liberal (8%), while 37% say they are conservative (26%) or very conservative (10%).

Almost four-in-ten voters say they are moderate (36%).

These shares are little changed since 2019.

The Republican coalition is overwhelmingly conservative: 49% of Republican-aligned voters say they are conservative and 20% say they are very conservative. About three-in-ten GOP voters say they are moderate (27%), and there are very few liberal identifiers in the party (less than 5%).

The Democratic coalition is more ideologically mixed than the Republican coalition. Among voters who associate with the Democrats, about half say they are very liberal (16%) or liberal (31%), while nearly as many say they are moderate (45%). Around 6% say they are conservative.

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Changing demographics of US voters and Republican, Democratic coalitions, 1996-2023 - Pew Research Center