Matthew Sheffield
matthew.flux.community
Matthew Sheffield
@matthew.flux.community
🟦 Writing and editing @flux.community
🟦 Host, Theory of Change podcast
🟦 Former TV producer and pollster
🟦 As seen in NYT, WaPo, NBC, NPR, Variety ...

New book: What Republicans Know https://flux.community/book/what-republicans-know
Most executives can be replaced with LLMs. This is why they think everyone else can. They've projected their incompetence onto others.
December 25, 2025 at 5:11 PM
Sally should just come out and say that she's a conservative looking out for her fellow conservative.
December 23, 2025 at 7:30 PM
Conservatives who pretend to be liberals are a pox on the American left.
December 23, 2025 at 7:15 PM
Reposted by Matthew Sheffield
asked RFK Jr a question about them at a Senate hearing and made him look bad, within hours they were renewed.

I won't discuss any information that is non-public from the agency, but it is striking that the renewals came after media coverage.
December 23, 2025 at 3:38 AM
And given differing cognitive styles, and that some people are more psychologically inclined to be conservative, we will always have people who are conservative. It would sure be nice if they were like Michael Oakeshott rather than the doofuses and authoritarians we get in the US.
December 23, 2025 at 3:33 AM
I should add that we can see from all this why far-right Christians are so desperate to control public education. They *need* to be able to brainwash children and young adults to have any hope of a future.

Letting people have free access to the full truth is not something they can allow.
December 23, 2025 at 12:50 AM
Lots more great information here at the study source below.

/end
Why Do Some Americans Leave Their Religion While Others Stay?
A majority of adults still identify with their childhood religion, but 35% don’t. Read about when and why Americans may switch faiths or stay.
www.pewresearch.org
December 23, 2025 at 12:36 AM
Two other questions show that religions that treat young people poorly seem less likely to retain their membership. But at the same time, high-demand religious households seem at least in this chart to retain membership more. So it's a tension.

Most switching seems to happen by age 30.
December 23, 2025 at 12:34 AM
This trend is present on the opposite side as well.

Republican adults who were raised outside religion seem *much* more likely to have joined one later compared to Dems.

80% of Democrats who were "nones" as kids stayed that. Far fewer, 64%, of Republicans did.
December 23, 2025 at 12:30 AM
There are extremely interesting crosstabs on religious switching among political partisans that support the idea that personal cognitive style undergirds religious and political preferences.

33% of Ds who were raised in a faith tradition say they are "nones" now. Just 14% of Rs by contrast.
December 23, 2025 at 12:28 AM