| Sumario: | This study analyzed voting data for leftist candidates in the 1920 and 1924 presidential elections, as well as data on the location of I.W.W. branches in 1924, to assess the Marxist thesis that religion is an "opium of the people." We used the 48 states as the units of analysis and found solid negative correlations between church membership rates and leftism. However, these correlations all turned out to be spurious; they disappeared when controls were added for the percent of the population born in Scandinavia. A lack of Scandinavians also accounted for the weakness of leftist parties in the American South. It is no doubt far more exciting to blame fulminating fundamentalism for the absence of "true class consciousness" in the South, and in the nation more generally. However, Marxist doctrines have fallen on hard times of late and that seems to have been the case here too.
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