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Study Shows Most Evangelicals Will Vote for Trump as 'Lesser of Two Evils'

  • Veronica Neffinger

    Veronica Neffinger wrote her first poem at age seven and went on to study English in college, focusing on 18th century literature. When she is not listening to baseball games, enjoying the…

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  • Updated Jul 15, 2016

More than 75 percent of white evangelicals say they will vote for Donald Trump, according to a new survey, but a majority of them also say they are not happy with the candidate choices.

ChristianityToday.com reports on the results of a new Pew Research Center survey of 1,665 registered voters.

The survey found that 78 percent of white evangelicals say they will vote for Trump, but only 55 percent say they are happy with that choice. Many say they are voting for Trump only to vote against Hillary Clinton.

Another interesting finding of the survey was that, while in the primaries, white evangelicals who regularly attended church were less likely to vote for Trump and those who rarely or never attended church were more likely to vote for Trump, now that Trump has become the presumptive Republican nominee, that distinction has almost completely disappeared.

Many white evangelicals reportedly see Trump as “the lesser of two evils.” Forty-five percent say they are voting for Trump not out of an endorsement for him, but out of a dislike for Clinton.

“Despite the professed wariness toward Trump among many high-profile evangelical Christian leaders, evangelicals as a whole are, if anything, even more strongly supportive of Trump than they were of Mitt Romney at a similar point in the 2012 campaign,” Pew stated. 

The survey returned much different results for black Protestants, however--eighty-nine percent of whom said they were voting for Clinton. Additionally, 60 percent of black Protestants said they were satisfied with the candidate choices.

The survey also found that, despite Trump’s efforts to court evangelicals, more Americans believe Clinton is religious than believe Trump is (48 percent to 30 percent).

Publication date: July 15, 2016