Evangelical voters are rallying “strongly” behind Republican Donald Trump, their earlier questions about him erased in a new poll that puts their support at 78 percent.
Pew Research Center said support for Trump among the key GOP voting block is even higher than it was for 2012 nominee Mitt Romney.
Atheists and other religious “nones” are flocking to Hillary Clinton in similar numbers. Pew said Thursday that Clinton receives 67 percent of the atheist vote to Trump’s 23 percent. Neither candidate are seen as being very religious themselves.
Pew said that both groups of voters are important in 2016:
“Considering both groups are quite large, the votes of white evangelical Protestants and religious ‘nones’ could be important to the outcome of the 2016 election. White evangelical Protestants make up one-fifth of all registered voters in the U.S. and roughly one-third of all voters who say they identify with or lean toward the Republican Party. Religious ‘nones,’ who have been growing rapidly as a share of the U.S. population, now constitute one-fifth of all registered voters and more than a quarter of Democratic and Democratic-leaning registered voters.”
Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner’s “Washington Secrets” columnist, can be contacted at [email protected]
