Evangelicals again likely to give overwhelming support to Trump

By Terry Mattingly

This headline in The Babylon Bee caught the attention of a New York Times scribe: "Pro-Lifers Excited To Choose Between Moderate Amount Of Baby Murder And High Amount of Baby Murder." 

Take that, Donald Trump.

Of course, it was satire, which is the stock-in-trade of the conservative Christian website. The Bee story noted: "According to a new Gallup poll, pro-lifers across the country are thrilled at the prospect of a moderate amount of dead babies. 'I thought we were on the path to ending abortion entirely, but I will definitely settle for just slightly fewer dead babies,' pro-life voter Dean Thompson said as he carried a sign at a Trump rally with the words: 'Slightly Fewer Dead Babies In 2024.' "

The snark-attack made a nice opening for a Times op-ed with this headline: "Why Trump Can Afford to Disrespect His Anti-Abortion Voters." In it, Michelle Goldberg noted:

"Trump has annihilated the expectation that Republicans show deference to the social conservatives who've been crusading against abortion for a generation. He's come out against six-week abortion bans. He removed a plank from the Republican Party platform calling for an anti-abortion amendment to the Constitution. He's promised that his administration would provide free in vitro fertilization. 

"In doing all this without losing significant support among Christian conservatives, he's demonstrated how little leverage the anti-abortion movement has over him."

The former president's back-slide toward the middle of America's debates on right-to-life issues even led to a blunt social-media signal, via his Truth Social platform, that a second Trump administration would be "great for women and their reproductive rights."

This gamesmanship was merely the latest chapter in one of the most-covered dramas in the past decade of American political life – Trump's attempt to keep religious conservatives in his camp, even while sending plenty of signals that he has never been part of that grassroots congregation.

The key, of course, is a statistic that has become a mantra for political-desk journalists – that 81% of white evangelicals will vote for Trump no matter what he does. 

That number was from the 2016 election, but the assumption that the 81% number represents a monolith of Trump loyalists has loomed over American politics ever since. Sure enough, a September 9 report from the Pew Research Center indicated that there would be little change in 2024, with 82% of white evangelical voters poised to support Trump, again. The same poll claimed that 58% of white non-evangelical Protestants – voters in liberal mainline Protestant pews – also support the former president.

Journalists interested in understanding the complex realities behind the 81-82% numbers should ponder a stark paradox found in mainstream news reports. The assumption is (a) that all white evangelical Protestants love Trump while, at the same time, (b) evangelical churches, institutions and entire denominations have faced nasty civil wars caused by Trump.

For starters, the evidence is that white evangelical voters have long been loyal Republicans – period. The 81% vote for Trump in 2016 was not radically different from the 78% white evangelical vote, four years earlier, for Mitt Romney – a true Republican moderate and a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Also, in the months before Trump's 2016 victory, the Pew Research Center found that more than half of white evangelicals (55%) were not happy with their voting-booth options, a number that wasn't radically different from the public (58%) as a whole. Roughly half of the white evangelicals who backed Trump said they voted against Democrat Hillary Clinton.

White evangelicals – let's assume the 82% Pew poll number is accurate – are poised to back Trump again. Here are some questions pollsters could ask: Among the other 18% of white evangelicals, how many are planning to (a) stay home, (b) vote for a third-party candidate or (c) vote for Democrat Kamala Harris? Here's one more question: Are down-ballot GOP candidates in swing states receiving more poll support, or less, than the controversial leader of their party?

Truth is, millions of white evangelicals will vote for Trump – again. But this doesn't mean that their views of him are identical. After the 2016 election, I created a typology describing six kinds of "white evangelical" voters in the Trump era. Here is an updated version of those camps:

(1) Many evangelicals have supported Trump from the get-go. He's their man and, if he is reelected, they believe everything will be GREAT.

(2) Others may have supported Trump early on, but they have always seen him as a flawed leader but the best available. They see him as complicated and evolving and are willing to keep their criticisms of his character and actions PRIVATE.

(3) Many evangelicals returned to the Trump tent when it became obvious that he would be the GOP nominee, again. They believe he is flawed, but they believe he can be trusted – at the very least – to protect their interests on First Amendment issues.

(4) There are many lesser-of-two-evils evangelicals who, while intensely skeptical about Trump, say that they cannot back Harris, with her fiercely liberal track record, under any circumstances. They remain convinced that religious conservatives must be willing to criticize Trump in public, for all the world to see.

(5) There are evangelicals who never backed Trump, and they never will. Many voted for third-party candidates in previous elections and will, again, or simply stay home.

(6) Finally, as illustrated by the press-friendly "Evangelicals for Harris" coalition, there are voices on the evangelical left who say, "No Trump, ever."

It is totally fair game for journalists to ask why Trump felt the need to undercut his support among religious and cultural conservatives.

A key evangelical thinker noted that the former president offered a blunt answer: "We have to win."

R. Albert Mohler, Jr., president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., noted: "He has a point. The problem is that no one who honestly holds to a pro-life position can assume the same point. It surely does not help that Trump has previously declared significant abortion restrictions in states like Florida to be 'horrible.' "

The ultimate grassroots question is not, "What will white evangelical voters do in 2024?" The question is what they will do in the future, as the Democratic Party grows more unified in defense of the doctrines of the Sexual Revolution and the Republican Party seeks compromises in swing states.

Again, Mohler was blunt: "I just want to say as a matter of political candor, just in terms of political realism, that there are an awful lot of people who hold office who are likely to turn out to be less pro-life than we thought once the tide changes and they're thinking about their own future political prospects."

___________________________________

Terry Mattingly writes the national "On Religion" column for the Andrews McMeel Universal syndicate and "Rational Sheep," a Substack newsletter on faith and mass media. He is a member of the Overby Center panel of experts.