Three new polls suggest that President Trump is losing ground among white evangelicals. What explains this drop — and will it affect the midterm elections?
Three new polls suggest that President Trump is losing ground among white evangelicals. What explains this drop — and will it affect the midterm elections?
Three new polls suggest that President Trump is losing ground among white evangelicals. What explains this drop — and will it affect the midterm elections?
Transcript
A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
White evangelicals are usually President Trump’s most loyal backers. New polling shows their support for Trump has plummeted. Jack Jenkins of Religion News Service talked to evangelicals about what’s behind the shift.
JACK JENKINS, BYLINE: Pastor Robert Jeffress is best known for two things – serving as pastor of First Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas, and being one of the most vocal evangelical supporters of President Trump. But while Jeffress remains bullish on Trump, he’s concerned about how factors like prices at the pump are pulling the president’s approval rating down.
ROBERT JEFFRESS: You know, evangelicals have to fill up their tanks with gasoline as well.
KRISTIN DU MEZ: Yeah. This is probably one of the very few times I’ll go on record agreeing with Robert Jeffress.
JENKINS: That’s Kristin Du Mez, a historian who studies evangelicalism at Calvin University.
DU MEZ: Inasmuch as there is a decline in evangelical support for Trump, I would interpret it in terms of the economy, in terms of, you know, these general trends that we’re seeing across nearly every demographic.
JENKINS: Since 2016, white evangelicals have formed the most loyal part of Trump’s base. Around 8 in 10 approved of his actions in the White House as of early last year. But the number has been dropping precipitously in recent weeks. Now three polls all show double-digit declines in his support among white evangelicals. According to a Pew Research Center poll released earlier this month, Trump’s approval rating has dropped 20 points from 78% to 58%.
RALPH REED: We’re hearing what you would expect to hear, which is concerns about cost of living, concerns about gas prices.
JENKINS: That’s Ralph Reed, a longtime evangelical activist and political consultant known as one of the architects of the religious right. And there may be other factors beyond dollars and cents here. Michael Weir is a Democrat and an evangelical organizer who helped former President Obama court religious voters. He says Trump’s drop in support among conservative Christians may signal a bit of evangelical exhaustion with the president.
MICHAEL WEIR: I don’t think we’re going to see massive, massive swings of conservative evangelicals voting for Democrats, but there is a bit of buyer’s remorse, a bit of this is not what we signed up for, a bit of just weariness with it all.
JENKINS: Du Mez says some evangelicals are trying to rally their faithful back to Trump and Republicans despite the economic woes.
DU MEZ: That is rhetoric that I am hearing from conservative evangelicals. Yes, these gas prices are wild right now. But if we are ensuring a safe country for our children, it is all worth it. We are willing to pay the price.
JENKINS: The fact that this drop in Trump support has happened on the eve of the congressional midterms makes some conservative activists nervous. Ralph Reed is working hard to combat it. At a Trump rally in Dalton, Georgia, he planned to recruit volunteers to help turn out evangelical voters in the midterm elections. He’s peppering evangelical voters with messages that tap into longstanding concerns, namely Democrats’ more liberal positions on issues such as Israel, LGBTQ rights and abortion.
REED: You get into the pro-life issues and the gender issues. And all that is on our voter guides that are going into churches. It’s on all the door hangers.
JENKINS: In the past, Trump’s support among evangelicals has dipped and then recovered. But it has never dropped this far, this close to an election. And now the key question is whether this downward trend will continue.
For NPR News, I’m Jack Jenkins.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
Copyright © 2026 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.
Accuracy and availability of transcripts for NPR programming may vary. Transcript text may also be revised to correct errors or match updates to audio. Audio may be edited after its original broadcast or publication. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
Please note that NPR platforms and products also include some programming produced by third parties; NPR cannot guarantee transcripts for that content and some transcripts may be produced using automated or other tools.
