Research by John Black confirms that Labor lost the Christian voters it gained last election, but did better with atheists and agnostics. But the Christians were more potent, living in key electorates. Non-believers were highly likely to be Greens voters.

You can read all of their research here, but the two most relevant paragraphs are:

The big group of atheists and agnostics - one in three voters - swung heavily to Labor across Australia. The boomers - Australian-born and European migrants - also swung to Labor. These big groups voted Green 1, Labor 2, explaining the swings to Labor in outer urban Adelaide and Melbourne, but none of the other pro-Labor swing groups voted Green 1 Labor two, to a statistically significant degree.

The anti Labor swing included the Christian evangelical faiths previously won by Kevin Rudd in 2007. While they were only one in ten voters on the faith spectrum, they live in the marginal Queensland and NSW seats. Also dumping Labor in 2010 were all of the more recent non European migrant groups, including those from the Asia/Pacific, and the big rental home group which went to the Greens from Labor and didn’t come back in preferences.

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