(LifeSiteNews) – Catholic and Protestant Americans played a critical role in returning President Donald Trump to the White House, according to a new analysis released by Pew Research Center.
On June 26, Pew released its latest comprehensive study on voting patterns in the 2024 presidential election based on 8,942 adult Americans surveyed from November 12 to November 17, 2024.
It found that Trump increased his margin among the nation’s two largest Christian groups over the 2020 election, winning Catholics by 55% (up from 49%) and Protestants by 62% (up from 59%). The Democrat nominee, former Vice President Kamala Harris, won 43% of Catholics (down from former President Joe Biden’s 50% in 2020), and 36% of Protestants (down from Biden’s 40% in 2020).
Moreover, Trump received support from 64% of Americans who say they attend religious services at least once a month, up from 59% in 2020. By contrast, non-religious Americans (atheist, agnostic, and generally unaffiliated) broke overwhelmingly for Harris, albeit at slightly lower levels than Biden in 2020.
“Overall, the religious composition of voters has shifted modestly since 2016. In 2024, roughly four-in-10 voters (43%) were Protestants, while about a quarter were religiously unaffiliated and 20% were Catholics. In 2016, Protestants made up 47% of voters,” Pew said. “Protestants again made up a majority of Trump voters (54%) in 2024, compared with 32% of Harris voters. The share of Protestants making up each coalition has dipped slightly since 2016 (…) Catholics made up about one-in-five Trump voters (22%) and a slightly smaller share of Harris voters (18%).”
Analyzing the racial breakdown of Pew’s findings, Tim Daniels at Zenit wrote that the “most striking development, however, was Trump’s surge among racial minority Protestants — particularly Hispanic and Asian Protestants, who are not typically considered part of his political stronghold. He won 70% of their votes, up from 55% in 2020. Even among Black Protestants, a demographic still overwhelmingly loyal to Democrats, Trump improved his share from 9% to 15%.”
“This tells us Trump successfully expanded his coalition,” John Green, senior fellow and former director of the Bliss Institute of Applied Politics, told Zenit. “He kept his core of white Christian support and reached out more effectively to Hispanic and Asian Protestant communities.”
The findings once again show the key role religious Americans play in U.S. elections and add to mounting evidence that Democrats’ fixation on far-left social agendas hurt them politically.
During the 2024 campaign, questions arose over Trump striking a more centrist stance on abortion, and how it would not only shape his second term but impact turnout among pro-life and religious voters on whom Republicans rely heavily. Ultimately, however, the pro-abortion absolutism of the Democrat ticket, and even more critically on gender issues (on which the public is less divided than life), kept most religious conservatives in the GOP fold and drove additional religious voters into Trump’s arms.
In March, a SSRS poll commissioned by CNN found that just 29% of Americans have a favorable view of Democrats, and only 27% of respondents to a new NBC News poll had a favorable view of Democrats. Both findings were driven largely by discontent from within the party.
Part of the reason is that the agenda, which has come to define Democrats, is firmly out of step with the general electorate, as affirmed by numerous recent polls and election results. Sixty-six percent of Americans oppose taxpayer funding for gender transitions, according to an April Cygnal poll, and Pew Research found that 66% support limiting athletic participation to actual members of a team’s designated sex, 56% support prohibiting transition procedures on minors, and 53% oppose forcing insurance companies to cover transition services.
In fact, exit polling by the pro-Democrat firm Blueprint found that the statement “Kamala Harris is focused more on cultural issues like transgender issues rather than helping the middle class” was the third-biggest reason for why overall voters chose not to vote for her, and the number one reason why swing voters rejected her and voted for Trump instead last November.
