A drift of evangelical voters away from the incumbent was a decisive factor in the way people cast their ballots in the US presidential election. But a more subtle understanding of the ‘religious vote’ is needed if we are to explain President Trump’s failure to be re-elected

President Donald Trump is well aware that he never would have made it to the White House without the support of evangelical Christians. “The evangelicals love me, and I love them,” he used to say. During his 2016 acceptance speech, he rightly recognised that evangelical support was “a big reason for me being here tonight”. As it turns out, the evangelical vote was also a deciding factor in his defeat in 2020.

Trump didn’t lose the election because religious voters failed to turn up for him. On the contrary, voter turnout was the highest it’s ever been in the United States, not only for religious groups but for all Americans. Trump lost the election because religious groups – including evangelicals – were more divided on the Republican candidate’s suitability for office than they were four years ago.

In 2016, 80 per cent of white evangelical Christians voted for Trump. Heading into the 2020 election, the majority of white Catholics and Protestants still supported him. While his margin of white evangelical voters fell to 76 per cent in the recent election, that’s still an overwhelming majority. Similarly, his percentage of the Catholic vote only fell from 50 per cent in 2016 to 47 per cent. The drop may have been slight – but it may have been the key reason why Trump has become one of the few US presidents to fail to be re-elected for a second term.