White evangelical support for Trump slips but still strong as midterms near

A new poll finds white evangelicals still outpace other demographic groups in supporting Trump, as he rallies the Republican base.United States President Donald Trump’s support among white evangelical Protestant voters remains strong but has slipped since he retook office in January 2025, according to a new poll.A survey released this month by the news agency Reuters and research firm Ipsos found that Trump’s support among the group had tumbled to 63 percent, down from 77 percent at the time of his second inauguration.Recommended Stories list of 3 itemslist 1 of 3Why do the US midterms matter for Trump and Congress?list 2 of 3US congressional candidate Brad Lander detained in West Banklist 3 of 3Trump says AI data centres should pay ‘dividends’ in pre-midterm shiftend of listThe shift comes as Trump’s approval rating drops to an all-time low of 31 percent.White evangelicals are considered a key Republican demographic, and the decline could prove significant during the midterm elections on November 3, when the right-wing party will seek to defend its majorities in Congress.Democrats remain widely favoured to take control of the US House of Representatives in the election. Their chances of flipping the Senate too are increasing amid widespread discontent over affordability and the US-Israeli war on Iran.But experts say Republicans are counting on their base to counter signs of a Democratic surge at the polls.On Wednesday, Trump campaigned in South Carolina, located in the southern “Bible Belt”, where exit polls found six in 10 Republican voters were white evangelicals in the 2024 presidential primary.Trump carried the state by nearly 18 percentage points in the 2024 presidential election, but polls have shown Republican Senate candidate Darline Graham holding only a narrow lead over Democratic challenger Annie Andrews just two weeks ahead of the midterm vote.As with many of his campaign appearances, Trump focused his South Carolina speech on several social issues that resonate with conservative Christians, including policies related to transgender people. During the rally, he referred to Andrews with an anti-transgender slur.“She’s a fanatical transgender activist,” Trump said at a different point in his speech, despite Andrews skewing moderate on the issue within the Democratic Party. “How the hell do you run in South Carolina? Am I in a different state?”Long a key demographic in Trump’s coalition, white evangelicals accounted for nearly a third of Trump’s winning coalition in 2024, according ⁠to a Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) survey and a validated-voter analysis by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center.The US president has been able to maintain support from key evangelical leaders despite a series of scandals at odds with the conservative values they espouse. Trump has faced allegations of sexual misconduct and extramarital affairs, which he denies.All told, about 80 percent of white evangelical voters cast their ballots for Trump in the 2024 general election. The demographic makes up about 13 percent of the overall US population.Beyond states like South Carolina, evangelicals in the Midwestern states of Iowa and Kansas, as well as the Southern state of Texas, could be key to the Republican Party maintaining its hold on the US Senate.Christian faith leaders are challenging Republicans in several top races, including Adam Hamilton, a United Methodist Church pastor, in Kansas, and James Talarico, a Presbyterian seminarian, in Texas.Both Hamilton and Talarico represent mainline Protestant denominations, not evangelical ones.White evangelicals’ voter trends are distinct from other evangelical groups. For example, Black Protestant evangelicals, a vanguard of the US civil rights movement, have remained a key Democratic voting bloc.Still, support for Trump among evangelicals remains strong compared with other demographic groups.It remains unclear if shifting attitudes towards Trump would affect conservative turnout during the midterm elections, in which the US president is not on the ballot.The Reuters news agency noted that white evangelicals were the only demographic it tracks that surpassed 60 percent support for Trump in the final stretch of the midterms.The drop in support among the group was less pronounced than for Trump’s overall approval rating, tumbling 14 percentage points compared with a 16-point decline among Americans overall.