How did evangelical political endorsements change between 2016 and 2020?
Executive summary
Between 2016 and 2020 evangelical political endorsements showed more continuity than rupture: the vast majority of white evangelical voters and many prominent evangelical leaders continued to back Donald Trump in 2020 after having helped elect him in 2016, though his share dipped modestly and fissures appeared along education, generational, and institutional lines [1] [2] [3]. Long-term alignment with the GOP deepened in this period even as a small but visible cohort of evangelical leaders and voters openly opposed Trump or endorsed Biden, exposing internal tensions about priorities and the costs of political capture [4] [1] [5].
1. Solid GOP alignment, with only modest erosion for Trump
White evangelicals remained overwhelmingly Republican across both elections: exit polls and surveys place Trump’s share of the white evangelical vote in 2016 in the low 80s and in 2020 in the mid-to-high 70s, a modest drop but still a dominant bloc for the GOP [1] [2] [3]. Analysts who compared Edison exit polls, Pew post-election surveys, and other datasets conclude the overall white evangelical preference for the Republican candidate held steady as a structural pattern that Trump’s campaigns explicitly targeted [3] [1].
2. Subgroup shifts revealed deeper fault lines
Beneath the headline numbers, education and geography mattered: Trump’s support among college-educated white evangelicals fell noticeably between 2016 and 2020, even as working-class white evangelicals remained more consistent in backing him, signaling divergent priorities within the label “evangelical” [6]. Younger evangelicals and those less tied to traditional institutions showed more volatility, a pattern scholars link to long-term demographic and cultural shifts rather than a one-off reaction to Trump’s conduct [7] [8].
3. Institutional endorsements — from near-unanimity to visible dissent
Where 2016 featured rapid consolidation of many Republican-aligned evangelical institutions behind Trump, by 2020 public dissent had become more visible: while national evangelical organizations and influential pastors largely maintained pro-Trump endorsements, individual leaders such as Joel Hunter publicly broke with that consensus and even organized pro-Biden efforts, drawing sharp backlash and highlighting internal disciplinary pressures [1] [5]. Scholarship and reporting emphasize that evangelical institutions are decentralized, so endorsements reflect both top-down organizing and local contestation [5] [8].
4. Issues and strategy drove endorsements more than character judgments
Surveys of evangelicals-by-belief found that material and policy concerns—especially economic promises and culture-war issues like abortion and religious liberty—often trumped personal misgivings about Trump’s conduct when voters and leaders decided whom to endorse, explaining why many endorsements persisted despite widespread private unease [1]. Analysts note campaigns purposely emphasized policy delivery (e.g., judicial appointments, Israel policy) to lock in endorsements even among those with “mixed feelings” about the president’s personal behavior [1] [5].
5. Measurement, third-party dynamics, and turnout complicate the endorsement picture
Comparisons between 2016 and 2020 must account for differences in polling and the relative absence of viable third-party options in 2020, as well as historically high turnout in 2020—factors that can make percentage shifts look larger or smaller depending on the dataset and weightings used [9] [3]. Researchers caution that some apparent changes in endorsement intensity reflect these methodological differences and changing self-identification patterns, not wholesale ideological realignment [9] [10].
6. What the change signals politically: consolidation with creases, not collapse
The period between 2016 and 2020 solidified evangelicalism’s role as a reliable Republican constituency even as it exposed internal tensions over authenticity, political strategy, and institutional identity—and while defections and anti-Trump evangelical groups made headlines, they remained a minority relative to the broader pattern of GOP alignment documented by Pew, Gallup, and exit polls [4] [3] [2]. Scholars and commentators therefore frame 2016–2020 as an era of political consolidation of evangelical influence coupled with emerging generational and educational fractures that could matter in future cycles [8] [6].