Kate Anderson
- The Christian vote in the 2024 primaries is an important demographic for Republicans, and religious leaders that spoke with the Daily Caller News Foundation indicated that only one candidate really stands out.
- Recent polls show former President Donald Trump winning the GOP nomination spot by as much as 26%, while his chances against President Joe Biden still present a large question about whether or not a 2024 rematch would place Trump in the White House.
- “[W]hen you look at how [Trump] performed as president in what he did in terms of advancing or restoring policies that respected faith and upheld a moral foundation, no one comes close,” Tony Perkins, the founder and president of the Family Research Council, a Christian advocacy organization, told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
As the presidential primaries approach, religious advocates believe that Donald Trump, of all Republican candidates, is likely to claim a large majority of the Christian vote.
Republican presidential candidates have been working overtime to impress religious Americans, with many attending the recent Faith and Freedom Coalition conference in June and spending large amounts of time among religious voters in battleground states. Former President Donald Trump is leading the GOP contenders, and religious leaders that spoke to the DCNF believe his previous record on issues of faith, life and freedom will win him the Christian vote.
Evangelicals, particularly, are keen to see the former president back in office, according to Tony Perkins, the founder and president of the Family Research Council, a Christian advocacy organization, that spoke to the DCNF.
“Donald Trump kind of raised the bar, which sounds a little odd on its face, because he certainly was not a candidate when given his background, and everything that evangelicals would have been drawn toward,” Perkins said. “But when you look at how he performed as president in what he did in terms of advancing or restoring policies that respected faith and upheld a moral foundation, no one comes close.”
Trump’s alleged affair with Stormy Daniels, his infamous, expletive-filled Twitter rants against various media, celebrity and political figures and his more recent trouble with the law might otherwise preclude him from gaining such strong support from religious circles; however, Trump’s policies and stances during his first term as president often resonated with those same voters who have often felt ignored by more mainstream Republicans, according to Perkins.
Trump made waves as the first sitting president to appear publicly at the March for Life, an annual pro-life march in D.C. that usually draws upwards of 10,000 people. In 2019, he announced that his administration was working on creating a new federal policy that allowed religious adoption facilitators, homeless shelters, health care clinics and other organizations to participate in grants from the Department of Health and Human Services.
In 2017, the former president issued an executive order to Attorney General Jeff Sessions to defend laws like the “Religious Liberty Accommodations Act,” which allows religious Americans to adhere to their faith on issues of same-sex marriage and gender identity and sexual orientation, that was passed in Missouri.
In 2020, Trump took 80% of white evangelical voters in 2016 and 76% in 2020, while a March poll found that in a head-to-head matchup, Trump is currently holding 51% of the evangelical vote over DeSantis’ 42%, according to Reuters.
“I think he’s the undisputed favorite,” Robert Jeffress, the pastor at First Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas, and host of the radio show Pathway To Victory, told the DCNF. “I made a prediction shortly after he announced his candidacy last November. I said that eventually, evangelicals would coalesce again around Trump, some of them might try to kick the tires of different candidates, but eventually, they would coalesce. What I didn’t realize was that ‘eventually’ would come sooner than anybody expected.”
The Faith and Freedom Coalition’s annual conference this year hosted many of the top GOP contenders to give them a chance to speak to evangelical Christians and appeal for their support. Trump had a strong base of support among the attendees, with many booing fellow candidate Chris Christie during the conference for criticizing the former president, while other potential nominees avoided mentioning Trump entirely.