Illustration by Pablo Carlos Budassi. CC BY-SA 4.0.
Eight in 10 Americans accept human evolution, according (PDF, pp. 203-204) to the latest (2023-2024) iteration of Pew Research Center's Religious Landscape Survey.
Asked "Which of these statements about the development of human life on Earth comes closest to your view?" 33% of respondents preferred "Humans have evolved over time due to processes such as natural selection; God or a higher power had no role in this process," 47% preferred "Humans have evolved over time due to processes that were guided or allowed by God or a higher power," and 17% preferred "Humans have existed in their present form since the beginning of time."
Rejection of evolution was associated with particular religious affiliations, Pew observed: "Some Americans believe that humans have not evolved — that they have existed in their present form since the beginning of time. This view is held by 17% of U.S. adults, including 10% or more of all the groups in this analysis except for atheists and agnostics. Notably, about a quarter of evangelical Protestants (26%) and Orthodox Christians (23%) say humans have existed in their present form since the beginning of time" (emphasis in original).
The Religious Landscape Study "is a national cross-sectional survey conducted for Pew Research Center by NORC at the University of Chicago. It was conducted in English and Spanish from July 17, 2023, to March 4, 2024, among a nationally representative sample of 36,908 U.S. adults." Respondents completed the survey online, by mail, or by telephone. The national margin of sampling error for the whole sample is plus or minus 0.8 percentage points at the 95% level of confidence.
The previous iteration (2014) "included different questions about human evolution that cannot be directly compared with the question in the new survey," according to Pew.
