Dem
51
GOP
49
George W. Bush did extremely well with evangelicals. One of his biggest selling points with them was faith and conviction as a born-again Christian. His personal acceptance of Jesus as his savior mattered lot to him, especially against Al Gore, who was much more interested in saving the earth than saving his soul. Those days are completely gone.
Nowadays evangelicals are primarily interested in political power and getting their political agenda enacted, come hell or high water. Candidates who wear their religion on their sleeves and make it a big part of their pitch are getting nowhere. Case in point: Mike Pence. The former vice president is a former Catholic and current evangelical who has been going to different churches every Sunday to spread the Gospel of Pence. It is getting him some smiles, but that's all. No votes. If evangelical voters actually cared strongly about religion, they would be flocking to him. After all, he is one of only two Republican presidential candidates who is genuinely religious and is not faking it. And it is doing him no good at all. Evangelical voters don't actually give a hoot about Jesus. What they care about are almost entirely issues Jesus didn't address at length, for example abortion and which high school sports team trans students should play on.
The other candidate who is very religious and making no secret about it is Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC). He is Black, so is he scoring big with Black evangelicals? Not at all. And certainly not with white evangelicals, despite his being on a "Faith in America" tour, talking about a "God solution" to the country's racial divide, and meeting with pastors in Iowa and elsewhere. Kristin Kobes Du Mez, a historian at evangelical Calvin University in Michigan and author of Jesus and John Wayne, said: "What matters to evangelicals is they are looking for the best candidate to further their agenda." With them, personal testimony is a bonus, but not essential.
The two leading Republican candidates with evangelicals now are Donald Trump and Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL). Trump wouldn't be caught dead in a church unless he was holding a rally outside of one and it suddenly began pouring. DeSantis is nominally a Catholic, but his entire pitch is how much he hates woke, not how much he hates sin. What evangelicals love about Trump is how he delivered three justices for the Supreme Court who not only strongly oppose abortion but also who place the feelings of religious people above the rights of gays and other groups the religious people dislike. His actual "achievements" are going to carry him far with this group.
Almost as important is style. After all, Jesus taught that if someone smacks you on the cheek, you should kick him in the [insert body part here] as hard as you can. Or something like that, right? In any event, they want a brawler and Trump fits the bill. DeSantis understands this too, and is trying to win them over by being even tougher than Trump, not by turning the other cheek or any other body part. Evangelicals want Rambo, not St. Paul.
Megapastor Robert Jeffries of Dallas, a big Trump supporter, said: "I don't see anyone who has announced so far who has a chance of capturing evangelicals except Trump." He probably knows. (V)