Donald Trump thinks he has the evangelical vote all wrapped up, but polling and a recent op-ed by two Georgia evangelicals demonstrate that he’s losing their support.
Georgia is a battleground state this year that could easily swing blue for Joe Biden. Recent polls show Trump with a slim lead, but Biden has had a lead there in a couple of them.
So, it really is anyone’s ballgame. Losing Georgia would be a significant blow for Trump, and it turns out that evangelicals could be the voting group that puts Biden over the top.
Ryan Hurlburt and Katharine Hurlburt are evangelicals who voted for Trump in 2016. They believed him to be the “lesser of two evils” even though they were supposedly disgusted by his extramarital affairs and other un-Christian behavior.
Stay up-to-date with the latest news!
Subscribe and start recieving our daily emails.
Nearly four years later, however, they’ve seen enough of Trump in office and will not be voting for him this time around.
Citing Trump’s behavior toward immigrants, Christian refugees, and human trafficking victims, the pair formally denounced Trump in an op-ed for The Hill.
“We are a white evangelical married couple living in Georgia,” they wrote. “We have both worked on evangelical missions across various cultural contexts, and are absolutely committed to upholding the dignity and value of all human life, including those who are not yet born. But having witnessed the negative effects that the administration has had on vulnerable people, particularly refugees and other immigrants, we are among the significant number of evangelical Christians who will not vote for the president again.”
The Hurlburts noted that Trump’s evangelical support has shrunk nationwide.
“[H]is margin of victory with white evangelical voters would be just 38 points (if the election were held today), dramatically down from his advantage of 61 points over Hillary Clinton. Evangelical voters are having second thoughts,” they said.
They count themselves among those who have changed their tune.
“With these harsh policies, the president has lost our votes. That does not necessarily mean we will vote for Joe Biden, but our consciences will not allow us to vote for Trump again,” they concluded. “We know it might take a miracle for the president to reverse course on his immigration policies at this point. But unless he does so, he will forfeit our votes and, as the polls suggest, many others as well.”
Trump’s strength among evangelicals has clearly weakened and his recent behavior is not helping him either. The coronavirus death toll in the United States is close to eclipsing 200,000, an unacceptable loss of life that should horrify anyone who dares to call themselves religious. Trump also refuses to support Black Lives Matter and won’t condemn one of his supporters who killed two protesters in cold blood. If evangelicals ever again want to claim that they hold the moral high ground, they must reject Trump in November. Enough is enough.
Featured image via Flickr/Gage Skidmore, under Creative Commons license 2.0
