Ryan Burge: 2024 Election Post-Mortem: Evangelicals

We’ve been newscucked!

The 2024 Cooperative Election Study just dropped.

This provides similar, but higher quality data on what happened in the 2024 election than the network exit polls. We have an important article coming out soon about voting patterns which relied on 2024 exit polls. Unfortunately, we finished it and it has already gone to press before this came out. This doesn’t change our conclusion that culture matters more than overhyped differences between the sexes.

Ryan Burge:

“Of course, Trump’s real base of support is specifically among white evangelicals. In 2016, Trump’s vote share was no different than McCain in 2008 or Romney’s in 2012 – about 77%. But in 2020, Trump ran up the score just a bit – garnering 81% of the white evangelical vote. The data from 2024 says he continued to win over the white evangelical vote at 83% – the highest on record.

However the breakdown of the non-white evangelical vote may tell the story of the 2024 election when it comes to religion. Republicans have historically struggled with this group of voters. In 2008, Obama enjoyed an 18 point advantage and that expanded dramatically in the next couple of election cycles. In 2012, the non-white evangelical vote was D+30 and it was D+25 in 2016. But then in 2020, Trump managed to make some inroads – getting back to 40% and narrowing the gap to 18 points. But look at 2024 – a huge shift. The non-white evangelical vote was essentially split in 2024 – Harris 49% and Trump at 48%. Harris lost at least ten points with this constituency – a huge blow. …

Here’s a stat that will probably end up being quoted somewhere – 90% of white evangelicals who attended church multiple times per week supported Trump in 2024. That was a nine point gain from 2016. The white evangelical results just basically mirror the analysis from the entire evangelical sample. He made gains at every attendance level from yearly on up. The only question I have when looking at this graph is: how high can he go with this group? Ninety percent is essentially unanimous in the world of public polling. …”

Here is something eyebrow raising.

Religion is swiftly becoming more salient than race.

According to the 2024 CES, Trump won a record 83% of White evangelical Protestants in 2024. He won 90% of White evangelical Protestants who attend church on a weekly basis. He also split non-White evangelicals. Half voted for Trump. Half voted for Kamala Harris.