Page is an American journalist, syndicated columnist, and senior member of the Chicago Tribune editorial board.
Black voters have traditionally been pivotal to the fortunes of the Democratic Party, but some recent polls have suggested that they are proving less bankable for President Joe Biden than in the past. Whether or not as many as 20% of Black voters have in fact deserted the Democrats, as some recent polls suggest, is a contested matter. But it’s probably fair to say that Democrats currently are in more of a defensive than a growth mode with that portion of the electorate.
But what of Donald Trump and evangelicals? Does the same apply?
Historically, what we used to know as the evangelical bloc has meant a lot to the GOP base, much like Black voters have been crucial to the Democratic base. But both of these truisms are looking less reliable this time around as we see churchgoing declining in America and more factions developing within a previously homogenous bloc. Abortion politics comes into play here too and Trump’s stance on the issue not only has been near impossible to pin down but also has appeared to many evangelicals to be a matter of political expediency, not sincere moral conviction.
That said, it’s also true that the idea of a single evangelical point of view is looking increasingly dated as cultural and political earthquakes have erupted inside the church just as they have within our current presidential race. Clearly, some of former President Trump’s statements in recent months have driven a wedge between his campaign and religious voters, particularly those all-important evangelicals,In April, for example, he said he believed abortion should be regulated at the state level, with very little interference from the federal government. His statements were met with strong backlash from the very same anti-abortion rights groups that had celebrated his appointment of the Supreme Court justices who helped write the landmark decision to overturn the Roe v. Wade ruling.
Trump’s head-spinning logic was impossible to follow. He took credit for the decision the three Trump-appointed justices helped make, but he then appeared to turn against its consequences, saying the states should make their own decisions about regulating abortion.
Trump’s new position infuriated the Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America organization, which favors a federal ban on abortion nationwide and condemned Trump’s comments as a “morally indefensible position for a self-proclaimed pro-life presidential candidate.” That should hardly have come as a surprise.
The issue now for Republicans, and Trump, is whether it will matter. And there’s a growing sense within Trump’s presidential campaign that he actually can afford some erosion of the traditional Republican support coming from evangelicals. That’s because Trump’s most impactful base of support in the 2016 primary contest came from a rising group in the GOP whose impact has been largely unnoticed: Republicans who are thoroughly disinterested in churches, synagogues or other places of worship.
Ryan Burge, an associate professor of political science at Eastern Illinois University and the research director for Faith Counts, has authored several books on church attendance including “The Nones: Where They Came From, Who They Are, and Where They Are Going.”
“Nones” is Burge’s label for the “non-affiliated” or “none-churchgoers.” No religious affiliation has morphed from 5% of the population to nearly 30% over the past half-century, according to Pew Research Center.
“The data show that the former president’s support among this low-attender group is growing, which means that in the short term, even if Trump does alienate some religiously devout members of the religious right,” Burge wrote in Politico last fall, “he remains well positioned to secure the nomination.”
That came true, and, from there, the evidence of continuance is compelling. Take this statistic from Burge’s article: “In 2016, 39% of all Republican voters attended church less than once a year. In comparison, just 36% said that they attended religious services at least once a week.”
It’s reasonable to assume that in 2024, the number of churchgoing Republicans has declined even further. Significantly so. And thus, they matter less to the ever-expedient Trump’s campaign for president.
Dozens of books and other media have been produced to try to explain the unexpected bond between white evangelical Christians and Trump’s populist MAGA movement. Or so everyone has been thinking.
But it might well be that they are missing the bigger point.
There simply are fewer Republican evangelicals these days, and the MAGA crowd now is better able to get along just fine without them.
First posted 4/19, 2024. (C)2024 Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
A view of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on June 25, 2026. President Donald Trump jolted Republicans during a fiery appearance at the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, scrapping a housing bill signing ceremony and clashing behind closed doors with a party rebel who challenged him over the Iran war. Trump had been expected to sign the bipartisan housing.
Only Trump doesn’t care about housing
It was August 15, 2024. Then candidate Donald Trump stepped out of his Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club’s columned clubhouse to a gaggle of reporters. He was flanked by tables of groceries and signs showing the rising cost of food. Also on one of the tables was a dollhouse, meant to represent the equally alarming rise in housing prices.
It was a speech about the economy, the single most important issue of the 2024 election cycle, full of promises that went right to the heart of Americans’ anxieties. While former President Joe Biden and then Vice President Kamala Harris were contorting themselves to posture a good economy that just needed more time to recover from the pandemic, Trump was preying on voters’ very real fears of unaffordable gas, groceries, and homes. It was obviously a winning message.
In that speech, Trump promised, “We’re going to open up tracts of federal land for housing construction. We desperately need housing for people who can’t afford what’s going on now.”
As of mid-2023, there had been a housing shortage of nearly four million homes, according to the National Association of Realtors. Americans all over the country were either priced out of buying new homes due to low inventory, trapped in their existing homes by sky-high mortgage rates, or facing exorbitant rent hikes thanks to corporate investors buying up rental properties. Americans needed help, and Trump promised it.
Cut to March of 2026, when Trump reportedly told House Speaker Mike Johnson, “No one gives a sh*t about housing.”
That kind of thinking may explain why Trump this week suddenly announced he was canceling a signing ceremony for the bipartisan “21st Century ROAD to Housing Act,” a housing bill co-sponsored by Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Tim Scott that passed the House 358-32 and was approved in the Senate on Monday.
Trump instead demanded Congress pass the SAVE America Act, his controversial election grievance bill that doesn’t have enough Republican support to get passed in the Senate.
It’s just the latest in a line of policy self-owns where Trump has seemingly intentionally made life more difficult for Republicans hoping to keep their majority. Despite midterm elections occurring in the midst of a blistering economy and an unpopular war, they were surely hoping the housing bill would give them something — anything — to brag about when they returned home to their districts.
And very much to the contrary, Americans do give a sh*t about housing. According to a recent survey by the Bipartisan Policy Center, a whopping 79% say the cost of housing is extremely or very important to them. Eighty-three percent say Congress should take action on the issue — like it just did. Eighty-nine percent say the House and Senate need to work together to pass affordable housing legislation — like they just did. And 63% say they would be more likely to vote for a lawmaker if they helped pass legislation to build more affordable homes and lower housing costs — like they just did.
There aren’t many issues that unite Americans like housing does, and very few bipartisan policy wins Congress can point to, and yet, Trump is holding that bill hostage in order to get his pet project — which doesn’t even have the support of his own party — pushed through.
If you’re trying to make sense of something so nonsensical, as I’m sure many Republican lawmakers are, it’s certainly sad but not actually all that complicated. Trump said what he needed to get reelected and then promptly abandoned his promises in order to pursue his own self-interests, even if those interests are bad for Republicans and bad for voters.
That’s just the kind of guy he is.
S.E. Cupp is the host of "S.E. Cupp Unfiltered" on CNN.