(RNS) — White evangelicals’ love affair with Donald Trump has been well documented over the years, and their unflagging support for the president was no different in the 2024 election.
But a new study examining the 2024 vote among nearly 7,100 verified voters shows the president won over the affections of many other Protestants beyond evangelicals — and Catholics too.
The Pew Research poll released Thursday (June 26) shows that Trump bested his performance among all U.S. Protestants, winning 62% of their votes, up 3 percentage points from the 2020 election, when Trump lost to Joe Biden. And Trump won 55% of the Catholic vote, up 6 percentage points from 2020.
Most surprisingly, Trump did exceptionally well among minority race Protestants (a category that includes Hispanic and Asian Protestants, but not Blacks), winning 70% of their vote, up from 55% in 2020. He did better with Blacks too, winning 15% of the Black Protestant vote, up 6 percentage points over 2020. Still, overwhelmingly, Black Protestants voted Democratic.
“What the overall study shows is that Donald Trump was able to expand his coalition,” said John Green, emeritus director of the Bliss Institute of Applied Politics at the University of Akron. “He maintained his religious supporters among white Christians but then reached out particularly to the Hispanic and minority communities to really pick up some people.”
Unaffiliated voters, including atheists, agnostics and those who say they have no particular religious affiliation, overwhelmingly voted for the Democratic candidate, with 70% voting for Kamala Harris and only 28% for Trump.
“Voters who attend religious services monthly or more frequently favored Trump by nearly 2 to 1 in 2024” (Graphic courtesy Pew Research Center)
The study was made up of validated voters, meaning those who said they voted and were recorded as having voted in at least one of the three commercial voter files that Pew checked. (Exit polls, which are available almost immediately after the election, are considered less reliable because not all registered voters who said they voted actually voted.)
The Pew study also shows that in 2024 Trump won a larger share of voters who attend religious services monthly — 64%, up from 59% in 2020. People who attend religious services have proved to be reliable voters even as their proportion of the population continues to fall. Indeed, the study found that voters who attend religious services monthly favored Trump by nearly 2-to-1 in 2024 (64%-34%).
“The people remaining in religious institutions turn out to vote at much higher numbers,” said Green. “One reason is that voting behavior is communal. If the people I hang out with vote, I’m more likely to vote. It’s a connectedness phenomenon.”
Trump’s improving numbers among Catholics overall might be explained by the fact that there was no Catholic candidate in the presidential race this time. President Biden, who is Catholic, won 50% of the Catholic vote in 2020. In 2024, both presidential candidates were Protestant.
