Trump and the faith vote: What people have been contending since Election Day

Richard Ostling via Religion Unplugged

(ANALYSIS) Turnout! Due to the stay-at-home factor, Democratic votes for president fell by some nine million from 2020, causing political scientist James Galbraith to say the party had committed “suicide.”

Kamala Harris and the Democrats had a big problem with men, especially those under 30. Donald Trump’s Republicans had a big problem with women (though Harris did a bit worse with them than the male Joe Biden had in 2020). Democrats couldn’t capture the political centre. Ditto Republicans.

Biden is to blame for not stepping aside a year ago. Or Kamala Harris is to blame (what, no press conferences and no town halls with voters?).

Or on the contrary, Harris waged a ”nearly flawless” campaign, as many have said, but no Democrat could have overcome the cost of living and open borders.  

Or Democrats’ money advantage no longer matters. Celebrities don’t matter. Democrats’ “big bet” on abortion as the No. 1 issue was a “flop” — even while Trump’s barrage on transgender issues may have worked. Voters wanted less P.C. in D.C.: “Woke is broke.” Or “diversity, equity and inclusion” is broke. Or identity politics has “failed,” since Hispanics voted on the economy like everybody else.

Or, as the Left has put it, America is suffused by “fascism,” “racism,” “sexism,” and the “politics of hate.” Jon Meacham, the canon historian at the Episcopal Church’s Washington Cathedral, charged that Trump’s “contempt for constitutional democracy makes him a unique threat to the nation.”

Since Meacham was formerly the top editor at Newsweek, that brings up the news business, whose influence is now challenged by chaotic social media and podcasting. Polls and pundits were too often off. And consider this attention-grabber from former Wall Street Journal Editor-in-Chief Gerard Baker: After 2024, it’s “hard to see” how the legacy media “can ever again claim a central role in the democratic life of the nation.”

Religion played only a modest role in all the verbiage. Stoking liberal alarms about “Christian nationalism,” Trump told evangelical broadcasters that “if I get in, you’re going to be using that power at a level that you’ve never used before,” and promised federal investigations of “anti-Christian bias.” Harris’s abortion-rights absolutism caused some Wisconsin hecklers to cry “Jesus is Lord!” whence she responded “you guys are at the wrong rally.” Harris’s snub of the Al Smith charity dinner echoed prior stands that vexed attentive Catholics.

As for the actual balloting, a headline in the conservative National Catholic Register announced that “Trump Can Thank Catholics for His Big Win.” That hyperbole captured the huge story — not just of 2024 — but of a generation in which Republicans consolidated a majority grip on white Catholics after a century of Democratic loyalty. It’s unclear, however, that Republican running mate J.D. Vance’s status as an adult convert to Catholicism affected the voting.

Associated Press VoteCast’s random sample of 120,000 people were polled by the University of Chicago NORC during the final days of the campaign. Catholics as a whole backed Trump at 54 per cent versus 44 per cent for Harris. That compares with Trump’s tiny 2020 edge of 50 per cent versus 49 per cent for Biden, a churchgoing Catholic. An Election Day exit poll gave Trump 56 per cent of Catholics to Harris’ 41 per cent.

The most important trend involves Hispanics, a normally Democratic and largely Catholic population with an evangelical Protestant minority. VoteCast figured in 2024, Hispanics favoured Harris at 55 per cent to Trump’s 43 per cent (which compares with 44 per cent for George W. Bush in 2004) but projected him winning “roughly half” of Hispanic men – both notable declines from Biden’s 2020 advantage over Trump.

An October Mercury Analytics poll for the liberal National Catholic Reporter with a sample of 1,172 Catholics was conducted in the seven swing states that produced Trump’s Electoral College win. There, 56 per cent of white Catholics were “definitely” or “probably” going to vote for Trump and 39 per cent for Harris — compared with Hispanics at 67 per cent for Harris and 28 per cent for Trump. An earlier poll by the Pew Research Center had shown Trump support at 61 percent for white Catholics and 34 percent for Hispanic Catholics.

Another approach, by The New York Times, tabulated all U.S. counties and found that compared with 2020, the Trump vote increased by 9.5 percent in the 228 counties that are more than 25 percent Hispanic, a pattern that was particularly striking along the southern border in Texas.

The year showed predictable patterns with other religious groupings. According to VoteCast, white evangelicals gave Trump lopsided support. (Yawn. They did the same for Republicans Romney, McCain and Bush). The same with Latter-day Saints. As usual, Democrats were heavily reliant on the growing non-religious vote, at 72 per cent support, and did well with Black Protestants, Jews and Muslims (both despite Gaza)  and other non-Christians. [AP reports “Trump once again won the support of about 8 in 10 white evangelical Christian voters, according to AP VoteCast, a sweeping survey of more than 120,000 voters.]

Some of the survey numbers conflict, and both polls before Election Day and exit polls can be iffy. So, a definitive understanding of religious voting in 2024 awaits numbers and analysis of two huge voter samples from the academic Cooperative Election Study, due by the spring, and the Pew Research Center survey of respondents “validated” as voters, expected by early summer.

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Richard N. Ostling was a longtime religion writer with The Associated Press and with Time magazine, where he produced 23 cover stories, as well as a Time senior correspondent providing field reportage for dozens of major articles. He has interviewed such personalities as Billy Graham, the Dalai Lama, Mother Teresa and Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI); ranking rabbis and Muslim leaders; and authorities on other faiths; as well as numerous ordinary believers. He writes a bi-weekly column for Religion Unplugged.