Evangelical support for Trump sliding in wake of protests
White evangelical support for President Donald Trump dropped by more than 10 percentage points the week that protests over George Floyd’s killing spread across the country, according to an analysis of recent polling data.
As of June 2, only 59 percent of white evangelicals said they would have voted for Trump if elections were held that day, according to Ryan Burge, an Eastern Illinois University religion and political science professor.
Burge analyzed polling by Data For Progress that’s been conducted every Tuesday since April 14. He used the survey’s data on white, born-again Christians as a stand-in for white evangelicals, as he said public opinion between the two demographic groups has generally been mirrored.
Burge noted a correlation between the drop in support for Trump and national outrage over the May 25 killing of Floyd by police officers in Minneapolis, Minn.
In the weeks prior to that — and despite criticism of his administration’s handling of COVID-19 — white evangelical support for Trump had remained relatively steady, Burge told the
Chronicle.
One day after Floyd was killed, about 70 percent of white evangelicals said they would vote for Trump, Burge noted.
The protests began soon after and, on June 1, Trump drew condemnation from many Christians for having protesters forcibly removed from outside the White House so he could pose with a Bible in front of a nearby Episcopalian church.
By June 2, the president’s support among white evangelicals had dropped to just over 59 percent.
Between May and June, Trump also lost the support of about 4.5 percent of those surveyed by Data For Progress. His presumptive Democratic challenger Joe Biden gained 3.6 percent of voters over the same period.
The findings indicate a significant wavering in support for the
president among a crucial voting bloc.
In the 2016 election, more than 80 percent of white evangelicals voted for Trump, and the president has since then enjoyed some of his highest approval ratings among that demographic group.
It also comes as both Trump and Biden continue to vie for religious voters. Last week, Trump announced a “Faith in America” campaign, and the president has also lambasted a U.S. Supreme Court decision on LGBTQ discrimination that was opposed by many conservative Christians.
Biden, meanwhile, has continued to discuss his faith on the campaign trail, raising concerns among the Trump campaign, according to a June 21 story in Politico.
Recent polling by Fox News also found that Trump was “underperforming” among white evangelical voters and rural voters. In 2016, Trump won white evangelicals by 64 points and rural voters by 27, according to Fox News.
He currently has a 41-point margin over Biden among white evangelicals, but only a 9-point margin among all rural voters, according to Fox News.
One of the people who conducts the Fox News poll also noted Floyd’s death in his analysis.
“It’s hard to believe an issue has emerged more challenging for Trump to navigate during his reelection campaign than a pandemic, but that happened with the racial reckoning prompted by George Floyd’s murder,” said pollster and commentator Chris Anderson.
And it appears the issue will persist in even the more conservative spheres of evangelicalism.
Leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention, for instance, have been notably outspoken in recent weeks about addressing racial inequality in society and their own denomination, the nation’s second-largest behind Catholicism.
Earlier this month, SBC President J.D. Greear grabbed national headlines after he said “black lives matter,” but criticized some of the policy positions taken by the activist group of the same name.
A few days later, the SBC’s national leadership elected a black pastor to a powerful position for the first time in the history of the denomination, which was founded out of support for slave-holding missionaries.