Change in Catholic Vote: 2016 Exit and Current 2020 Polling
The newspaper Politico makes some interesting points in a recent article. Among their observation is that the Trump campaign has engaged in a number of actions the campaign feels are directed to religious voters, but so far, these action appear to be falling flat.
Months after worries first exploded inside the Trump campaign over his eroding support among white evangelicals and Catholics, some of the president’s top religious allies are now in a panic — concerned that Joe Biden’s attentiveness to Christian voters is having a profound impact where the President can least afford it, they report.
One prominent evangelical Protestant leader close to the White House said Joe Biden’s policy positions on abortion and religious freedom, which would normally spoil how some religious voters view the Democratic presidential nominee, have been overshadowed by the contrast between the former vice president’s palpable faith and Trump’s transactional view of religion.
Other put it more simply. Few people believe that Donald Trump has any moral qualms about abortion. While conservative political activists might come to terms with a totally transactional deal with Trump on abortion, the pro-life rank and file are not so craven.
Polling is backing up what many are seeing -- Christians are moving away from Trump, both Catholics and Protestants.
An online survey, which was conducted by a team of academic pollsters from the University of Southern California, Duke University, University of Maryland College Park and University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, predicts an 11 percentage point swing toward Biden among evangelicals and Catholics who backed Trump in 2016, based on input from both demographics across five major 2020 battleground states: Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Other polls have captured similar gains in Biden’s religious support, including an August survey by Fox News that showed the former vice president at 28 percent support among white evangelicals — up 12 percentage points from 2016 exit polls for the Democratic nominee.
“The cumulative effect of the convention and the way that faith has been woven into Biden’s messaging speaks to the kinds of numbers we’re now seeing,” said Michael Wear, who directed faith outreach for President Barack Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign.
According to the study, evangelical voters are split over which presidential candidate is more virtuous, while Catholic voters selected Biden over Trump by a 21-point margin. The largest gaps in voter perceptions of Biden and Trump emerged when respondents were asked to weigh each candidate against commonly recognized Christian virtues, including generosity, diligence, chastity, kindness, patience, modesty and humility. Only 22 percent of respondents gave the president a higher rating on his displays of humility and modesty versus Biden’s, while the pollsters cited Trump’s perceived lack of kindness — 44 percent of respondents said Biden is more kind than Trump, while 30 percent said Trump is kinder — as the leading cause of defections among Catholics and evangelicals who supported him in 2016.
“While it was baked in back in 2016 that Donald Trump was bombastic and crude, he always hinted that he would be presidential when he needed to be presidential,” said Doug Pagitt, a Minnesota-based pastor and an executive director of Vote Common Good, adding that some 2016 religious Trump voters have since “woken up to the fact that [Trump] has not changed one bit.”
More on the poll here: Christians Moving from Trump tp Biden
The Trump campaign sees it differently. In its view, most religious voters are less concerned with a candidate’s religiosity or virtuosity than they are with the impact of proposed policies. Biden, campaign officials claim, has adopted unreasonable positions on the issues that matter most to Catholics and evangelicals, including judicial appointments, religious freedom and abortion.
“I don’t think it’s going to work for Biden to say, ‘Don’t look at my policies, just look at the fact that I carry a rosary in my pocket,” said former GOP Rep. Tim Huelskamp, a member of the president’s Catholics for Trump advisory board.
Trump went even further last month when he questioned the depth of Biden’s faith and accused his opponent of being “against God.” During an Aug. 6 appearance in Ohio, the president told his supporters Biden wants to “hurt the Bible [and] hurt God.”
But in addition to considering Biden more devout and religious, many Christian voters are siding with Biden on results. The Trump Administration has had little impact on abortion rates while the Affordable Care Act enacted by the Obama-Biden administration has resulted in one million fewer abortions. That is a big number for pro-life voters to ignore and certainly is more meaningful not only of any single action of the Trump Administration, but all of their allegedly pro-life actions totaled.
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