A new post-election poll sponsored by the conservative grassroots organization Freedom and Faith Coalition (FFC) found that there was a “record turnout” of faith voters in the 2020 presidential election.
The poll, which was conducted by Public Opinion Strategies under FFC’s commission, was released on Wednesday. Findings show that 81 percent of self-identified evangelicals voted for President Donald Trump, which tied the total he received in 2016. On the other hand, only 14 percent of evangelicals voted for Democratic nominee Joe Biden.
“Trump’s 81% of the evangelical vote tied his 2016 total, while Biden won the lowest share of the self-identified white evangelical vote ever received by a Democratic presidential nominee,” FFC explained in a statement.
“The post-election survey commissioned by FFC and conducted by Public Opinion Strategies also found that 31 percent of the electorate self-identified as conservative Christians, and these voters cast 87 percent of their ballots for Trump and only 11 percent for Biden.”
While Biden and his campaign sought to gain evangelical voters in the 2020 election, FFC founder and Chairman Ralph Reed told The Christian Post that the reason most evangelicals rejected Biden was because they “are driven by principles,” “values” and “specific public policy positions,” not “partisanship” or “personality.”
Reed also contrasted Trump’s pro-life record against Biden’s pro-choice stance, including his decision to repeal the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits taxpayer funded abortions. Biden, who expressed past support for the legislature, has since shifted his stance as of last year.
“Look at the other issues,” Reed continued. “Religious freedom. When the Little Sisters of the Poor decision was announced by the Supreme Court, Joe Biden released a statement and said if he were elected president, he would re-impose those regulations — regulations that by a 7-2 margin, the Supreme Court had just ruled were unconstitutional.”
When comparing White evangelical support from this year to the 2016 presidential election, Biden secured 14 percent of White evangelical support whereas Hillary Clinton secured 16 percent.
“Issue after issue, he was the most hard-left nominee they had ever nominated, on issues that burn in the hearts and give meaning to the souls of tens of millions of people of faith and Donald Trump took positions that they believed advanced the moral good,” Reed argued.
In a conference on Wednesday, Reed touted the success of FFC’s “get-out-the-vote” campaign, which he called “the most ambitious, effective grassroots voter education get-out-the-vote effort directed to voters of faith.”
“We knocked on 5,226,247 doors. That is five times what we did four years ago,” he explained. “This all took place basically within 75 days of the election.”
“We made over 10 million get-out-the-vote calls, we placed digital ads for at least 50.2 million evangelical Christian voters on their Facebook page or other digital sites that they were on … we also sent out tens of millions of get-out-the-vote text messages that included a link to our voter guide”, the FFC founder continued.
Reed also noted that while evangelicals comprised 27 percent of the electorate, there was a larger turnout in 2020 than from 2016, with a 1 percent increase.
Between both elections, there were approximately 35.6 million evangelical voters in 2016 while 2020 had approximately 43.2 million.
Photo courtesy: ©Getty Images/Drew Angerer/Staff
Milton Quintanilla is a freelance writer and content creator. He is a contributing writer for CrosswalkHeadlines and the host of the For Your Soul Podcast, a podcast devoted to sound doctrine and biblical truth. He holds a Masters of Divinity from Alliance Theological Seminary.
