Evangelical support for Donald Trump in the face of his many well-documented personal failings can no longer come as a surprise. Despite—or, in at least some cases, one suspects, because of—his numerous criminal indictments and thirty-four felony convictions in New York, exit polls found that around 82 percent of white evangelicals voted for the Trump/Vance ticket. This was in line with the roughly 80 percent who backed Trump in 2016 and 2020.
A few commentators still cling to the argument that this support is not enthusiastic and that many evangelicals “hold their noses” when they cast their ballots for Trump. Still, when given the option of supporting bona fide evangelical Mike Pence in the 2024 Republican primary, they preferred Trump. And empirical research has cast doubt on the idea of the reluctant evangelical Trump voter. Political scientist Paul A. Djupe surveyed voters in 2016 and found that “evangelical feelings toward their standard bearer are statistically no different than others.... Evangelicals who voted for Trump felt the same warmth toward him as did other Trump voters.”
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