They’re the cohort that gets a lot of media play — fastest growing, now tallying over 30 percent of the population, a fertile demographic waiting to be plucked, recruited, enlisted, politically seduced.

They are the “nones.” Let’s be honest; we conservatives have written them off. They’re young — 65 percent are under 50 years old — and make up a lot of millennials and Gen Zers (44 percent of millennials and 45 percent of Gen Z are nones). And they’re out there — pro-abortion, pro-gay, pro-trans climatistas. Why, they’re probably throwing back a Bud Lite and selecting “tuck-friendly” swimwear from their local Target to wear while gluing their hands to the Interstate even as we speak.

We’ve got no shot with them.

But is it true?

Conventional wisdom would say so. Nones comprise three groups — atheists, agnostics, and people who adhere religion-wise to “nothing in particular.” Which is not to say, of this latter category, anti-religious, nor even non-religious. They simply don’t belong to an organized spiritual group.

The atheists truly do not represent a ripe constituency for conservative pickup. They’re 5 or 6 percent of the voting public, and in 2020 they went 87 percent to 9 percent for Biden. Religion pollster par excellence Ryan Burge, in an interview with Mark Tooley, said:

Atheists are the most liberal religious group in America today…. Atheists are loud and proud about how liberal they are…. The atheists over the last four years actually see themselves turning to the left, like towards the very liberal side, and they actually see the Democratic Party moving towards the middle.

Agnostics — atheists lite — are not much more pliable to the conservative plow. Another 5 or 6 percent of the electorate, they pulled the lever in 2020 at an 80 percent clip for the elderly man with a suspect memory.

That leaves 18 to 20 percent of the population in the “nothing in particular” category. Alas, they, too, look left for their political options. A Pew Research survey put 62 percent of them as Democrat or leaning Democrat. A substantial 82 percent of nones consider themselves either moderate or liberal, compared to a shockingly sparse 15 percent who say they’re conservative.

But that 62–38 split (Democrat v. Republican) is not set in stone. In 2016, for example, while the nones broke for Hillary Clinton, the numbers were only 55 to 45. Burge opined on why that happened:

[Trump] was a guy like them, who was the outsider, like, “I represent you, no one’s representing you, and I’m representing you and I’m going to shake Washington up because it’s not working for you.” And a lot of these “nothing in particular’s” are anti-institution, right? Society’s not working for them, they like outsiders.

In 2020, however, the nones reverted to Democrat form, primarily, according to Burge, because Trump didn’t deliver — he didn’t shake up Washington, didn’t “drain the swamp.” He turned out to be just another pol.

But the point is that votes of the nones are gettable. Evangelicals constitute a similar percentage of the population as the “nothing in particulars” (excluding atheists and agnostics) — about 21 percent — and retaining the evangelical vote is almost a Republican obsession.

But, says Burge, “No one’s talking about the ‘nothing in particular’ vote … but if you can swing 5% of the ‘nothing in particular’s’ in your direction, that can mean the difference in a swing state.”

The upcoming presidential election figures to be agonizingly close, with most pundits placing the outcome on the teeter-totter that is the seven swing states. Polls in those states currently favor Trump, but, as David Catron points out, the Dem-friendly election laws that ushered Biden into the White House in 2020 in five of those states are still on the books, thanks to Democrat governors who “refuse to protect the integrity of their elections.”

Add that to the fact that few voters seem to be open to changing their minds, and their votes, and we may see a reprise of 2020, with slim majorities in a few states providing the difference.

The race for the George Santos seat in suburban Long Island underlines how difficult prevailing in 2024 will be. The Democrat, Tom Suozzi, won the special election for the seat vacated by the disgraced Santos, expelled from the House in December, by a substantial 8 points.

And he won it by employing a strategy that attacks Republican vulnerability and seems ripe for duplication. He emphasized abortion and anti-Trump rhetoric to energize his base, then wandered into Republican territory for the crossover vote by hitting the immigration issue. He called for a more secure border and praised the recently quashed Senate immigration bill endorsed by Democrats. A liberal, he posed as tough on the border!

If a Democrat can take a Republican issue — some say the Republican issue in 2024 — and make it a political winner in a suburb of New York City, where the immigration failures of the current administration are on ready display — for example, with attacks on police by newly arrived immigrants that go viral — it spells big trouble for Republican chances in 2024.

Every vote will be valuable in the upcoming election, and the races in all sectors — in the House, in the Senate, and for the presidency — will likely be extremely tight; any victory for conservatives may balance on a razor’s edge. Any inroads made by Republicans in any sector of the voting public could prove crucial in 2024.

The “nones” don’t seem a particularly fertile field of votes for the party, but the nones may have become as liberal as they’re going to be. As Burge says, “they’ve kind of hit the ceiling when it comes to drawing in liberals.” It will be a challenge, for certain, but Republicans might be able to shave off a few percentage points from that voting body.

Trump can still speak to this demographic. He’s an outsider once again, a candidate going up against the bureaucracy, and an anti-institutionalist, just like a lot of the nones. And the system is fighting him with everything it has.

That might be enough to convince some “nones” to vote R. And that might be enough to carry a swing state or two.