As a matter of statistical fact, more than any other demographic, evangelical Christian voters are deciding the 2024 Republican presidential primary.
According to ABC News exit polls, self-identified born-again Christians comprised 61% of the electorate in Saturday’s GOP presidential primary in South Carolina. They gave 72% of their vote to former President Donald Trump and 27% to former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley. (The rest of the primary electorate picked Haley over Trump, 54% to 45%.) In other words, Trump’s landslide victory was sealed by evangelicals.
This was certainly the case in Iowa too, where more than half of caucusgoers were evangelical Christians, who accounted for 53% of Trump’s winning total. (Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Haley, and Vivek Ramaswamy each won 27%, 13%, and 7% of evangelicals, respectively.) In South Carolina, where two-thirds of all voters identify as evangelical, since 1980 the victor in the state’s primary contest has proceeded to become the GOP nominee, with just one exception.
The profound influence of evangelical voters will continue next week when 16 states hold their Republican primary contests on what is known as Super Tuesday.
This cycle’s Super Tuesday will be the pinnacle of evangelical participation in the election season from a structural standpoint. Nearly half of the day’s primary states are Southern states, where nearly 90% of citizens profess a belief in God. During the last contested GOP primary, Pew Research Center noted that “members of evangelical Protestant churches make up huge shares of Republicans in most Super Tuesday states,” including majorities in Tennessee (67%), Alabama (63%), Arkansas (61%), and Oklahoma (56%), and nearly half in Texas (46%).
With evangelicals playing such a decisive role, the eventual Republican nominee must pay close attention to the issues driving them to the ballot box, including abortion, support for Israel, border security, religious liberty, criminal justice reform, and human trafficking. Also on their minds, without a doubt, are the Biden administration’s continued assaults on people of faith.
Just last year, faithful citizens were horrified when, mere days after a transgender shooter opened fire at a Christian day school in Nashville, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre took to the podium to lament that transgender people, not Christian school children, were “under attack.”
This year, half a dozen peaceful Christians were convicted of federal crimes and could face more than 10 years in prison simply for praying in front of an abortion clinic.
Meanwhile, to this day, President Joe Biden’s Justice Department refuses to investigate the majority of hate crimes committed against Catholic churches, which have sustained a total of 398 violent attacks since 2020.
Beyond the federal government, leftist bigotry toward religious people is visibly growing in other sectors and institutions meant to serve the public good, especially journalism.
Just last week, Politico’s national investigative correspondent Heidi Przybyla warned on MSNBC of so-called Christian nationalists who, as she defines them, “believe that our rights as Americans, as all human beings, don’t come from any earthly authority.” Instead, in her telling, these insidious people believe rights “don’t come from Congress, they don’t come from the Supreme Court — they come from God.”
That she has since reiterated her position on X confirms not only her ignorance and animus toward all Christians, but also those of her employer. The takeaway is as clear as it is chilling: The Left views faith voters as a threat and is prepared to smear and marginalize even the most mainstream believers in order to help Democrats retain power.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
Religious Americans have every reason to be outraged. And from what Faith and Freedom Coalition leaders are witnessing, evangelicals are casting their ballots for a candidate committed to both eradicating threats to religious freedom and protecting the bedrock principles of free expression for future generations.
After the GOP presidential nominee is chosen, the candidate will be tasked with turning out every eligible conservative religious voter in America to win the general election. Maximizing evangelical turnout is indispensable for victory and will depend on remembering these voters and what they care about every day.
Timothy Head is executive director of the Faith and Freedom Coalition.