Millions of evangelical Christian voters are abandoning Donald Trump in a massive warning that one of his most important power bases is eroding, a bombshell new analysis has found.
The Washington Post has revealed that midterm election data from 343 counties with large concentrations of white evangelical voters show that voter turnout was just 66 percent of what it was in 2024.
Data from the ACP Social Science Lab at Michigan State University shows that while Trump won in those areas by a margin of 62 points, Republican Senate candidates enjoyed just a 45-point advantage in this month’s election.
Trump prays with evangelical leaders in 2020. They’ve long been some of his most important allies.
Turnout in the heavily white evangelical counties was far lower than in nearby counties, where it was around 78 percent of its 2024 level, according to the Post. The low turnout likely played a key role in the GOP’s sweeping midterm losses, as Democrats seized control of the House and Senate and made inroads in traditionally deep-red states, including Kansas, South Carolina, Iowa, and others.
In typically ruby-red Mississippi, voters elected Democrat Scott Colom as the state’s first Black senator since the 19th century, signaling a shifting balance of power.
Democratic Senator Scott Colom is the first Black senator in Mississippi in more than a century.
Brandon Bell/Getty Images
“Those changes may have led to the Republican loss of the Mississippi U.S. Senate seat, surprising big Democratic margins in a few Senate races, and several Democratic pickups of GOP-held U.S. House seats around the country,” Dante Chinni, founder of ACP, told the Post.
White evangelicals have long been among the core elements of Trump’s MAGA movement, according to PRRI data. They backed Trump by 81 percent to 17 percent for Kamala Harris in 2024.
But Trump’s policies are corroding his evangelical support, with voters concerned about the rising cost of living, the war with Iran, and allegations that Trump is using the presidency to enrich himself. A Pew Researchsurvey ahead of the midterms found that while 78 percent of white evangelicals approved of the president at the start of his second term. That number has since dropped to 58 percent—a flashing red light for the Republican Party.
In April,Trump deleted an AI-generated image depicting himself as a Jesus-like figure after it provoked a furious backlash from white evangelicals and other Christian communities.
Trump’s support from white evangelicals had been bolstered in 2022 when Trump appointed justices to the Supreme Court who voted to overturn Roe v. Wade, long a key aim of the pro-life right.
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