No, the Majority of American Evangelicals Did Not Vote for Trump

Source: The Gospel Coalition | November 15, 2016 | Joe Carter

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Based on polling data and news sources, you might be under the impression that an overwhelming number of evangelicals—more than 80 percent—voted for Donald Trump. But this isn’t quite accurate. There isn’t any way to truly know what percentage of evangelicals voted for our president-elect. But using a more nuanced analysis we can reasonably estimate that somewhere between 35 percent and 45 percent of all evangelicals in America voted for Trump.

Why are the media reports so off the mark? Here are four reasons:

1. Exit polls do not capture the ‘evangelical’ vote, only the ‘white evangelical’ vote.

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2. The exit poll conflates ‘evangelical’ and ‘born-again.’

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3. Many cultural Christians who never go to church identify as ‘evangelical’ or ‘born-again.’

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4. Exit polls only tell us about the people who have voted.

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Before we opine on what evangelical voting behavior means, we should first make certain our claims are based on reasonably accurate assumptions about how evangelicals voted—or didn’t vote.

Addendum: One more category from the exit poll that is worthy of notice is the “Best description of vote.” While the majority of Democratic voters said, “I strongly favor my candidate” (53 percent), only 42 percent of Republicans said the same. The majority of Republicans said the best description of their vote was “I dislike the other candidates” (51 percent).

Assuming the same percentage is true for white evangelicals who voted Republican, we can make a rough estimate and conclude that the majority voted for Trump because they did not like Clinton. We can also assume that approximately only 1 in 5 of all evangelicals (about 18 percent) strongly favored Trump—about the same as the number that strongly favored Clinton (an estimated 19 percent). 

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