Trump’s trouble with Christian voters
Pandemic response has cost him some support
The nomination of Amy Coney Barrett in the White House Rose Garden was supposed to be a triumphant moment for a long-standing alliance between Republican presidents and conservative Christians.
On Sept. 26, evangelical leaders sat in the rows behind Barrett’s family. Catholic leaders from the University of Notre Dame, where Barrett teaches, filled more seats. Other attendees included members of conservative advocacy groups that grew out of the Moral Majority movement.
A prominent segment of that faith group had worked for decades to build enough political influence to advocate effectively for right-leaning appointments to the U.S. Supreme Court. Barrett would be Trump’s third such appointment.
“For white evangelicals, who have become largely single-issue voters, this is the moment they have been waiting for,” said Brandon Rottinghaus, a presidential politics researcher from the University of Houston. “They want to see the court turn, and they want, in particular, for Roe v. Wade (and the constitutional right to abortion) to be over
turned. This changing seat is the key to that.”
The nomination event Sept. 26 gained widespread public attention for a different reason.
At least 14 people in attendance – including the president – tested positive for COVID-19 within two weeks of the celebration. Few wore masks or adhered to federal guidelines for social distancing. At least 34 cases have been linked to the White House outbreak.
Polls show that as people’s confidence in Trump’s pandemic response declined so did the percentage who said they would vote for his reelection.
“The picture of contrast at that event is notable,” said Andrew Lewis, a political science professor from the University of Cincinnati who wrote a book about conservative Christian politics. “They are not taking precautions for people in the room and their family members, which is in stark relief to the potential for a Supreme Court decision to protect the lives of the unborn.”
At first, Christian approval for Trump’s pandemic response mirrored the 2016 election turnout.
In late March, 81% of white evangelicals said he was doing a good or excellent job of managing the coronavirus crisis compared with the 77% who voted for him in 2016, according to surveys by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center and the group’s study of validated votes. This spring, 62% of white Catholics approved of Trump’s pandemic response compared with 64% who voted for him four years ago.
By early August, ratings of Trump’s pandemic decisions had slid 11 percentage points among white evangelicals and 16 points among white Catholics.
In the two weeks before the Rose Garden event, according to a poll released Monday by the nonpartisan Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), white Catholic support of the president’s coronavirus response registered its lowest point this year: 40%.
In early August, 83% of white evangelical Protestants said they would vote for Trump, but that dropped to 78% by early October, according to Pew surveys. Support slipped from 59% to 53% among white mainline Protestants and from 59% to 52% of white Catholics.
For evangelical Protestants, whose religious identity is tightly woven with politics, abortion is a top voting issue, but for other Christians, including some who lean Republican, abortion does not poll as a priority. White Catholics have become an increasingly important swing vote in presidential elections.
If Trump’s support among conservative Christian voters drops more, Rottinghaus said, it would be “a difficult path for him to win the White House back.”
Election influence
Polls show that white, non-Hispanic self-described evangelical Protestants account for about one-quarter of all registered voters in the USA. For decades, the group has strongly supported Republicans.
They are the nation’s largest voting bloc by faith, race and ethnicity.
White evangelical voters are key to GOP candidates in national elections, but their influence is waning as America’s demographics shift.
White Christians from all branches of the faith accounted for nearly 6 in 10 registered voters in 2008 but less than half today. The slide is primarily driven by young Americans who say they are not religious.
Over the past decade, a growing number of white Catholics have described themselves as independent or Republican. Since the 2004 presidential election, political analysts said, this group holds particular influence over the outcome in swing states.
Nonwhite Christians have remained about one-fifth of registered voters in the past decade and are more likely than white families from the same faith traditions to vote for Democrats. That makes them a small target and less interesting to GOP strategists.
Polls show that a majority of nonwhite voters, regardless of faith, supported Democrat Joe Biden throughout the spring and summer.
The success of Trump’s campaign could hinge on the decisions of white Christians – and how they weigh his pandemic leadership against other issues.
History and identity
The contrast between staunch white evangelical support for Trump and the slipping support from white Catholics is tied to the evolution of each group’s political identity.
For decades, to be a white evangelical has been to be Republican.
“It really goes back, at least in the modern era, to 1948 when the Dixiecrats walked out of the Democratic convention,” said Marty Wiseman, a retired professor of history at Mississippi State University who led the John C. Stennis Institute of Government.
The delegates from Southern states, most of whom were white evangelicals, opposed the party adding a civil rights plank to the platform. Until that point, the American South – where the majority of white evangelicals lived – had voted solidly Democrat.
More white evangelicals joined the Republican Party after the Supreme Court deemed racial segregation of public schools unconstitutional in 1954. They felt even less welcome among Democrats when the party supported civil rights changes in the 1960s and when a Supreme Court decision recognized abortion as a constitutional right in 1973.
At the end of the 1970s, the Rev. Jerry Falwell founded the Moral Majority, a movement that sought to turn conservative evangelicals into an organized voting bloc focused on ending abortions. Unlike other prominent evangelicals of the era, he argued that faith and politics had to be blended. The Republican Party welcomed the influx of voters and catered its platform to them, strengthening the link between evangelicals’ religious and political identities.
Americans who belong to mainline Protestant or Catholic traditions have tended to lean Democratic, but polls show that both have remained divided politically. Though they have organized around particular policy issues – such as Catholics who advocate to abolish the death penalty – they have not built ties with a singular political party.
Life as sacred
By early August, poll ratings of President Trump’s pandemic decisions had slid 11 percentage points among white evangelicals and 16 points among white Catholics.
The mounting tally of deaths from COVID-19 could weaken the president’s support among some Christians, depending on how their faith defines “life issues.”
Fundamentalists – such as evangelicals and some conservative Catholics – prioritize unborn children for protection because they are seen as the least able to defend themselves.
Barrett – who asserted that her personal faith will not influence her judicial decisions – is a Catholic and a member of a conservative wing that shares a strong anti-abortion stance with evangelicals.
Catholics have been divided for decades about abortion, according to polls. The official church position is to oppose them.
Most Catholics – as well as mainline Protestants – take a more holistic view of life as sacred than evangelicals do.
The secular phrase “social justice” originates from Catholic “social teachings.” The doctrine calls believers to action on matters of human dignity and common good in society, stretching from conception to natural death.
That wider view of life as important could drive differences in who considers the pandemic a voting issue.
About 60% of the country says the coronavirus pandemic is a “critical” issue in the presidential election, including 58% of white Catholics and 55% of white mainline Protestants, according to the PRRI poll released Monday. More Hispanic Catholics (72%) and Black Protestants (79%) say it is.
Thirty-five percent of white evangelical Protestants say the pandemic is critical. They are the only group polled by PRRI in which a majority say abortion is a critical issue and the only group not to list the pandemic as a topthree concern.