1 / 2Religion-Evangelical CloutFILE - In this Jan. 3, 2020 file photo, supporters of President Donald Trump turn and yell towards the news media during a rally for evangelical supporters at the King Jesus International Ministry in Miami. Trump's bond with white evangelical voters has long sparked debate. But misunderstandings persist about his support from a Christian voting bloc that favored the GOP long before he took office.
The prospect of white evangelicals defecting from Trump in greater numbers is an appealing one to his critics, including the Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump Republican group that last week tried to undercut his evangelical appeal in a video that asked whether he is “the best American Christians can do.” Democrats also have grounded some arguments against Trump in moral values as they court voters of faith, including evangelicals.
Evangelicals are generally defined by several traits, including a “born again” connection to their faith, an emphasis on sharing the gospel through evangelism or other activity, a view of the Bible as an essentially authoritative text, and a belief in the centrality of Jesus Christ's sacrifice through crucifixion.
“Does he occasionally say or tweet something evangelicals prefer he would not? Yes, he does,” Reed said. “But in an overarching way, they believed many of the other people who ran against him weren’t tough enough to withstand what they were going to get from the media and the Democrats.” What’s harder to gauge, though, is whether the same criticisms of Trump's moral compass that have shown scant signs of fraying his popularity among self-described white evangelicals could bear fruit with other devout voters.