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Evangelical Christian voters are more supportive of Donald Trump today than they were of Mitt …
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Nearly 80 percent of white evangelical voters plan to vote for Trump, new survey says
- A new Pew Research Center report on religion and the 2016 presidential election found many evangelicals voting for Trump are doing so because they don't like Hillary Clinton.
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A new Pew Research Center report on religion and the 2016 presidential election found many evangelicals voting for Trump are doing so because they don't like Hillary Clinton. | Photo Credits: DepositPhotos
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By Kelsey Dallas, Deseret News
Posted Jul. 15, 2016 at 10:23 AM
Evangelical Christian voters are more supportive of Donald Trump today than they were of Mitt Romney at a similar point in 2012, according to a new report on religion and the 2016 election.
Nearly 8 in 10 white evangelical voters (78 percent) say they would vote for Trump if the election were held today, compared to 73 percent who said the same about Romney four years ago, the Pew Research Center reported. Findings come from a poll of 2,245 U.S. adults, including 1,655 registered voters, which took place from June 15-26 and has an overall 2.4 percent margin of error.
The survey shows that evangelical support for the presumptive Republican presidential nominee runs deep, in spite of high-profile opposition to the candidate from some evangelical leaders, such as Russell Moore, president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention.
White evangelical Protestants who attend church at least weekly are almost as likely to support Trump as evangelicals who attend church less often. More than three quarters of voters who fall into the former group (76 percent) say they would vote or lean toward Trump if the election were held today, compared to 79 percent of less-active evangelicals, Pew reported.
Greg Smith, Pew's associate director of research, said that this doesn't necessarily mean that Trump is an ideal candidate for evangelicals or that they think he's a devout Christian. Forty-five percent of evangelicals say they're mainly voting against Clinton, compared to 30 percent who are mainly voting for Trump.
"It's opposition to the democratic candidate that drives evangelical thinking about this election as much as it is any kind of support for or confidence in Trump," Smith said.
In addition to exploring evangelical concerns, the new survey looks at how other faith groups plan to vote in the upcoming election, highlighting support for Hillary Clinton among the religiously unaffiliated.
"Despite two very unpopular candidates, the major religious constituencies of each party are lining up behind them," said John Green, a distinguished professor of political science at The University of Akron.
Losing influence
White evangelical Protestants constitute about one-third of voters who identify as or lean Republican, according to Pew. They're an important voting bloc, even as their status in American culture at-large appears to be at risk.
"Nearly half of white evangelical Protestants (46 percent) say it has recently become more difficult to be an evangelical Christian in American society," compared to 18 percent of Catholics and 7 percent of the religiously unaffiliated, or "nones," Pew reported.
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