Now that the shut down has ended, we can expect to see focus shift (at least until the next doomsday on January 15, 2014) to the question of immigration. Because of the rising numbers of Hispanics in the US partly fueled by immigration, there will be greater focus on the views of Hispanics are on various issues.

The Public Religion Research Institute has done a new survey and they find the following:

Hispanics are three times more likely to identify as affiliated with the Democratic Party than with the Republican Party. Half of Hispanics identify with the Democratic Party (50%), compared to 15% who identify with the Republican Party. Roughly 1-in-4 (24%) Hispanics say they are politically independent.

What I found particularly interesting was that when it comes to religion, Hispanics become less religious as they grow older.

A majority of Hispanics identify as Catholic (53%), one-quarter (25%) identify as Protestant—nearly evenly divided between evangelical Protestant (13%) and mainline Protestant (12%)—and 12% of Hispanics are religiously unaffiliated. Few Hispanics (6%) identify with a non-Christian religion.

When comparing today’s Hispanic adults to their childhood religious affiliations, Catholic affiliation drops by 16 percentage points (from 69% to 53%). Evangelical Protestant affiliation has increased by 6 percentage points (from 7% to 13%), while the percentage of those claiming no religious affiliation has increased by 7 percentage points (from 5% to 12%).

They seem to be split roughly equally on the issues of same sex marriage and abortion.

Hispanics are on different sides of the cultural divide on the issues of same-sex marriage and abortion. A majority (55%) of Hispanics favor allowing gay and lesbian Americans to marry, compared to 43% who are opposed. By contrast, a majority (52%) of Hispanics say abortion should be illegal in all or most cases, compared to 46% who say abortion should be legal in all or most cases.