First and foremost, we’re good friends who can spend hours geeking out about politics and religion. Juhem’s superpower is analysis, and Sarah’s is strategy. Together we are nerdy advocates for accurate and authentic representation of the secular vote.
In 2023, we presented at “Religiously Unaffiliated: Understanding and Engaging the Nones,” at Netroots Nation. And over a few beers, we decided that it was past time we figured out how to take back the narrative about secular voters. The Secular Vote was born.
We reached out to our network of top atheist and humanist experts on secular people, and the response was overwhelmingly positive. We hope you’ll take advantage of their deep expertise to expand your knowledge of the nonreligious.
The inspiration for The Secular Vote was our shared frustration observing media, politicians, and research institutions talk about secular people without truly talking to us. We’re cutting through the noise and the bias and sharing a truer, more complex, and exciting (at for us nerds) perspective on the fastest growing religious group in the United States—the nonreligious.
There has been a growing interest in studying and reporting on the rapidly growing population of “nones” (people without a religious affiliation) in the United States in recent years, and with it a growing recognition of the impact of this demographic on our culture and politics. However, the research being conducted, analysis presented, and resulting discourse in media and academia about this population continues to be influenced by religion.
Mainstream media often explore the rise of the nones as a “problem” for U.S. society, and routinely rely on commentary and analysis from religious sources, rather than seeking insights from expert sources from within the community itself.
Similarly, research institutions often explore how religious life has declined as a problem to be solved, not as a societal trend in which people need to be understood why they are leaving in their own words and terms.
As a result, there are pervasive misconceptions and narratives while major gaps in our understanding of this demographic remain unexplored as funding for secular-led research is scarce.
As proud and active members of the secular community, we bring not only deep expertise but also passion for accurate representation of secular people to The Secular Vote. Our goal is simple: to create an all-encompassing resource for all things related to secular voters.
Sarah M. Levin is a strategist, lobbyist, and grassroots organizer specialized in secular policy and engaging nonreligious Americans. She has worked in the secular movement for over a decade.
Sarah is the founder and principal at Secular Strategies, a firm specialized in advancing secular policy and activating secular Americans. Her past and current clients include the nation’s leading secular leaders and nonprofits, including Huffman for Congress, the Center for Freethought Equality, Jews for a Secular Democracy, Military Association of Atheists & Freethinkers, Rights and Religions Forum, among others.
A political scientist who specializes in American and Comparative political behavior, Dr. Navarro-Rivera has a diverse work and research portfolio. He is currently the Political Research Director and Managing Partner at Socioanalítica Research, a consulting firm that helps organizations and businesses that are led by or that serve people of color with research and analysis tools that help them better fulfill their missions.
As a scholar, Dr. Navarro-Rivera is interested in the intersection of race, religion, and politics in the United States with a particular emphasis on the political behavior of the Nones (Americans with no religious affiliation), and the rise of Latinos with no religious affiliation. He is known as a leader in the field of secular studies with publications include many articles, book chapters, columns and research reports on issues of politics, race, and secularism in the U.S. and internationally. His research has been featured in national and international media, including The Washington Post, NBC Latino, O’Globo (Brazil), The Times (London), and Reforma (Mexico).
We self-funded this free public resource out of passion, and with the goal of increasing accurate reporting and understanding of secular people. But there is so much more to learn, and we’d love to discover and share more insights about secular people with your help. You can throw a tip in the proverbial tip jar, or make a more serious contribution to the future of research on secular voters, here.
We use the word “secular” as a catchall for voters who are unaffiliated with religion and use “secular” and “nonreligious” interchangeably. You may have seen this demographic referred to as “nones”—learn more about why we intentionally choose not to use “nones” here. We also don’t use atheist, humanist, freethinker, or other nontheist labels to describe this demographic because while the folks who use these labels account for a substantial number of the people who make up the secular cohort, secular voters are incredibly diverse in belief backgrounds and identity.
We strive to keep The Secular Vote up to date on all recent, publicly available data on the secular vote, accompanied by our expert analysis to help you understand the finer truths and nuances behind the numbers and the headlines. That said, this project is a labor of love, so we may occasionally miss some of the latest findings or studies that may not be widely distributed. If there’s something missing you’d like to flag, drop us a line at info@thesecularvote.com.
Our mission is to promote accurate and authentic representation of the secular vote. Often public narratives about secular voters are biased, inaccurate, and told through the lens of religion—even by organizations and people you might consider to be secular or secular-friendly. Learn more about how The Secular Vote came to be here.
Through the sweat, blood, and tears of our co-founders, Dr. Juhem Navarro-Rivera and Sarah M. Levin. You can learn more about them here, and chip in to support their work here.
The Secular Vote is a joint project of Secular Strategies and Socioanalítica Research
©2025 The Secular Vote
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