Kamala Harris Beating Donald Trump With Key Group of Christian Voters: Poll

Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, leads former President Donald Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, with a key group of Christian voters, new polling shows.
The former president has attempted to position himself as the candidate most focused on issues conservative Christians are concerned about, such as championing religious freedom and opposing transgender health care for minors. He also regularly touts his appointment of conservative judges to the Supreme Court, which led to the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022—reversing a longstanding precedent that established a federal right to abortion.
“I love you Christians. I’m a Christian. I love you, get out, you gotta get out and vote. In four years, you don’t have to vote again, we’ll have it fixed so good you’re not going to have to vote,” Trump told supporters at a conservative Turning Point Action event in Florida in July.
However, new polling released by EWTN News/RealClear Opinion Research showed the vice president ahead of Trump with Catholics, a key demographic of Christian voters. Harris has the support of 50.1 percent of Catholics whereas Trump is backed by 42.7 percent. That’s a lead of more than 7 points for Harris.
An additional 6.2 percent said they remained undecided, while about 1 percent planned to vote for an alternative candidate. Notably, the data also showed a plurality (48.7 percent) of Catholics disapprove of the job President Joe Biden is doing in office, while 41.2 percent approved.
The polling was conducted from August 28 to August 30 among 1,000 Catholic voters with a margin of error of plus or minus 3 points.
Newsweek reached out to the Trump and Harris campaigns via email for comment on Saturday morning.
Biden became only the second U.S. president in history who identified as Catholic, with the first being former President John F. Kennedy. Harris identifies as a Baptist, however her husband is Jewish and her mother raised her as Hindu. Trump previously identified as a Presbyterian but told Religion News Service in 2020 that he now considers himself a non-denominational Christian.
The Associated Press’ VoteCast exit polling showed Trump very narrowly won Catholic voters in 2020. The former president won 50 percent of the religious community whereas Biden won 49 percent. In 2016, Trump also won 50 percent of Catholics whereas former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton won 46 percent, according to CNN exit polling.
Trump is particularly popular with white Catholics and white evangelical Christians. In 2020, 57 percent of white Catholics voted for him while 42 percent backed Biden, according to the AP. About eight in 10 white evangelicals supported Trump in that election.
Some Christian leaders have expressed concerns about Trump’s waffling position on abortion, warning it could dissuade some conservative religious voters from showing up at the polls in November.
Theologian Dr. R. Albert Mohler, the president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminar and a long-standing figure in conservative Christian politics, told The New York Times’ The Run-Up podcast that Trump faces the “grave danger” of evangelicals staying home on Election Day.
“If you’re talking about choosing between Harris and Trump, I think that’s clear. If you’re talking about getting the vote out, that’s a different question. And that is where I think the Trump campaign is in grave danger,” Mohler said in an episode of the podcast published on Thursday.
“I think it’s not that there are a lot of evangelical and conservative Christians that are in danger of voting for the Harris-Walz ticket. I think that’s a nonexistent threat. There is the danger that they will not turn out to vote,” he added.
April polling data from the Pew Research Center showed Trump with the support of 81 percent of white evangelicals and 61 percent of white Catholics. Just 17 percent of white evangelicals and 38 percent of white Catholics said they’d back Biden. The survey was carried out from April 8 to 14 and included 8,709 respondents, with a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 1.5 percentage points.
Biden made the unprecedented decision to drop out of the race in late July, after he had all but officially secured the Democratic party’s nomination via the primary process. He endorsed Harris to replace him at the top of the ticket and she quickly secured the party’s official nomination.
A group called “Evangelicals for Harris” began running commercials across social media in August. The campaign highlighted the Bible verse warning that “many false prophets have gone into the world.”
Thousands have also signed a petition launched by Christian organization Faithful America, pledging not to vote for Trump and saying they were “horrified” by his recent remarks at the conservative Turning Point Action Believers’ Summit. The petition references the January 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol riot as a “violent Christian-nationalist insurrection.” On that day, thousands of Trump supporters stormed the federal building in an attempt to stop Congress from certifying Biden’s 2020 election victory.
Karli Wallace Thompson, digital campaigns director of Faithful America, told Newsweek in a mid-August email: “The insurrectionist ex-president and his supporters constantly weaponize Christianity and use dangerous Holy War rhetoric that could stoke further political violence.”
At the same time, many prominent Christian leaders continued to vocally support Trump.
“The liberals are using anything and everything they can to promote candidate Harris. They even developed a political ad trying to use my father @BillyGraham’s image,” evangelical leader Franklin Graham wrote in a mid-August X post, criticizing the “Evangelicals for Harris” group and its ads.
“They are trying to mislead people. Maybe they don’t know that my father appreciated the conservative values and policies of President @realDonaldTrump in 2016, and if he were alive today, my father’s views and opinions would not have changed,” he wrote.