Does religion play a significant role in voting behavior in sub-Saharan Africa? The perception has long been that religious identity has little impact on electoral decisionmaking, with many countries across the continent formally banning political parties from organizing along religion lines or making explicitly religious campaign appeals. But is that in fact the case in today’s environment?

Exploring these questions, Robert Nyenhuis and Thomas Isbell employ a novel dataset to analyze presidential candidates’ use of religious rhetoric and signals during election campaigns in six African countries (Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, South Africa, Zambia, and Zimbabwe). Their results point both to religion’s increasing salience in African politics and, perhaps surprisingly, to a related development of stronger national identities among the electorate.