Pastors twice as likely to support Trump as Harris: poll

By Ryan FoleyChristian Post reporter Sunday, September 22, 2024

Twice as many pastors said they plan to support former President Donald Trump over Vice President Kamala Harris in the upcoming election, a new poll shows, though many of them are reluctant to share their preference.

Lifeway Research released a report Tuesday based on responses from 1,003 U.S. Protestant pastors between Aug. 8 and Sept. 3. The survey, which has a margin of error of +3.3 percentage points, examines pastors’ views on the upcoming presidential election. It found that 50% of respondents plan to support Trump, while 24% plan to vote for Harris.

A significant proportion of pastors (23%) indicated that they were undecided who they intended to vote for in the election.

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“We ask pastors about many things happening in today’s culture, and they are willing to share their opinions,” Lifeway Research Executive Director Scott McConnell said in a statement. “But the growing number of pastors reluctant to share their voting intentions shows how sensitive or divisive politics have become in some churches.”

The report found that exactly half of those surveyed identified as Republicans, 25% as independents and 18% as Democrats.

“Of all the ways pastors describe themselves, their own political leanings are the best predictor of how they will vote,” McConnell said. “Denominational groups often lean one way politically, but pastors must serve alongside many clergy who do not share their political views.”

“The same is true for their own congregations. In a culture that is increasingly intolerant of people with different political views, pastors are leading churches that are striving for unity centered on faith.”

The findings are similar to a 2020 Lifeway study that found 53% of Protestant pastors planned to vote for Trump in the election this year, while 21% planned to support Joe Biden and 22% were undecided. In 2016, four in 10 pastors said they were still undecided in September of that year, while nearly a third (32%) planned to vote for Trump and 19% planned to vote for Democrat Hillary Clinton.

In 2024, Pentecostals had the largest share of respondents planning to support Trump (65%), followed by Baptists (64%), nondenominational Christians (64%), members of the Church of Christ (55%), Lutherans (48%), Methodists (26%) and Presbyterians (24%). A significantly larger share of self-identified evangelical pastors (61%) signaled their intention to support Trump than their Protestant counterparts (30%).

In addition to asking pastors which candidate they prefer in the election, the survey also asked respondents to indicate “what characteristics of a candidate are important to you when deciding how to cast your vote.”

Eighty-five percent of respondents considered “the ability to ensure national security” an important factor in deciding who to support in the election.

Other qualities that more than 80% of pastors consider essential in candidates include: “ability to protect religious freedom” (84%), “stance on foreign policy” (83%), “ability to improve the economy” (83%), “stance on immigration” (81%) and “stance on abortion” (80%).

The vast majority of respondents also cited the candidate’s “personal character” (79%) and “likely Supreme Court nominees” (75%) as factors that influenced their decision.

While 71% of respondents said they thought “the candidate’s ability to address racial injustice” was important, and 70% said the same about “the candidate’s position on (the size of) and the role of government,” fewer than half (38%) gave similar weight to “the candidate’s ability to address climate change.” When asked what they thought was the single most important factor influencing their vote, a majority (24%) said they thought the candidate’s “personal character” was particularly important.

Other popular choices for the most important characteristic in a presidential candidate include views on abortion (18%), “ability to protect religious freedom” (16%) and “ability to improve the economy” (12%). Fewer than 5% of respondents listed all other characteristics of a candidate as the most important factor in their vote in the 2024 election.

“Pastors are not single-issue voters. They care deeply about where presidential candidates stand on a range of issues,” McConnell said. “All of the traits that you can pick have a moral dimension, and pastors did not pick the same trait as the most important one.”