Evangelical support for Trump mirrors 2016

The percentage of white evangelical voters supporting President Donald Trump in 2020 was very similar to 2016, when the group overwhelmingly voted for him. According to exit polling by Edison, 76% of white evangelicals voted for Trump in November. An Associated Press VoteCast survey reported 81% chose Trump, the same share of white evangelical Trump voters widely reported after the 2016 election.

Joe Biden, projected by most major outlets as the winner of the 2020 election, received 24% of the white evangelical vote according to Edison, and 18% according to VoteCast.

“The religious landscape in terms of voting has been remarkably stable,” Robert P. Jones, CEO of the Public Religion Research Institute, told NPR in a recent interview. “Since Reagan, we have essentially seen this: white Christian voters have tended to support Republican candidates, and Christians of color and everyone else, including the religiously unaffiliated, have tended to support Democratic candidates.”

A Gallup report noted white evangelicals have followed the pattern of voting for the Republican candidate in the last five presidential elections.

VoteCast reported that among Catholic voters, 42% backed Biden, himself a Catholic, while Trump got 57% of those votes. In 2016, Pew Research reported, Trump received 64% of the white Catholic vote and Hillary Clinton won 31%.

Ryan Burge, assistant political science professor at Eastern Illinois University in Charleston, credits the “nones” for putting Biden ahead in the vote. The group, who considers their religion nothing in particular, comprise more than 20% of the U.S. population. They placed themselves just left of center in 2016, Burge wrote, but have moved more toward the Democratic party in the years since. Their support of Trump dropped from 46% in 2016 to 39% in 2020.

– Lisa Misner