Joanna: I think that the Me Too movement might have happened if Trump was not in office,
if Clinton got elected, but it would not be happening to the degree that it is happening
right now.
Dan: Joanna, thank you for being here at AEI and being willing to talk about this brand
new survey that Morning Consult produced, looking at white evangelical Protestants,
their politics and of course, Trump.
Joanna: Yes.
Dan: We'd love for you to tell us a little bit more about it.
Joanna: Sure.
So we had these conversations about religion and Trump and especially after 2016, an election
that no one really expected to go the way that it did, we wanted some answers, especially
in terms of why conservative Christians, why white evangelicals, voted the way that they
did.
You know, many people predicted that because Trump did not fit the mold of who...
Dan: He did not.
Joanna: He did not.
He did not fit the mold of who the traditional Republican candidate would be, especially
for conservative Christians.
That group would kind of fall away.
You know, with each news item that came out about Trump, there is a pretty good, "Oh,
this is the thing, that's gonna make white evangelicals, you know, not show up."
Dan: Head for the hills.
Yeah.
Joanna: Yes, exactly.
And it turns out they didn't, 80%, 81%.
Dan: Eighty-one percent, yeah.
Joanna: Of white evangelicals...
Dan: Which a high watermark for the past few elections, right?
Joanna: Absolutely.
Dan: I mean, McCain did not do that well, Romney did not do that well.
Joanna: Yep.
Dan: Along white evangelicals so, that was impressive by almost any standard.
Joanna: Surprising, very, very surprising, given the track record of his whole campaign
and who he represented as a person to these groups.
So we're two years in to Trump.
Dan: Feels longer.
Joanna: Yeah, it does feel like longer.
But to say...it's been a busy two years.
Dan: Yes.
Joanna: There have been a lot of scandals involving Trump.
Who couldn't forget Stormy Daniels, for example.
And we wanted to kind of figure out, okay, so we're two years in, about two years away
from the election 2020.
Where are white evangelicals right now?
Where do they stand?
And what does it look like for the next election?
What does it look like for the year after?
And one of the things that we found in Morning Consult polling, not the one that we did with
you guys, is that Trump's favorability, it's pretty much stayed the same throughout a number
of scandals, including Stormy Daniels.
With that in mind, you know, you wrote a very good questionnaire, and I had some input,
I had no input.
I had some input on it.
Dan: You were there in spirit.
Joanna: I was there, I helped with the logistics of it, where we were exploring okay, so what
are the social and cultural anxieties?
What are the reasons evangelicals might stick with Trump?
Or what are the reasons why evangelicals might stray from him?
And essentially, what we found two years in, and I'd love to get your take on the data
too, but kind of my take is that, you know, this cultural and social anxiety that fueled
Trump's win to the White House, that evangelicals pushed him into, is still existing.
They don't necessarily think that his moral shortcomings, as probably they would phrase
it, are reasons to abandon ship, or reasons to leave the party, or reasons to not vote
for him.
One of the things that we found was that there's a 16 point difference between Republicans
who wanted Trump at the top of the ticket versus white evangelicals, and I believe it
was 71% and 56%, something like that.
Dan: Yeah, 55%.
Joanna: Fifty-five percent, that's what it was.
Dan: Which is interesting, right?
Joanna: Yes.
Dan: Like, that majority of evangelicals, and you offered Trump, Mike Pence, who is
of course the VP or any other Republican.
And so majority of white evangelicals were like, "Nope, we want Trump."
Joanna: Yeah.
And we you know, we're going back and forth about Pence, Trump, I mean, Pence is so much
more emblematic of the type of leader that white evangelicals would want.
And yet, there was only I think, a three or five...
Dan: Yeah, honesty, integrity, a family-oriented politician, and Trump is, of course, none
of those things.
Joanna: Yeah.
Dan: And so you know, what is it?
And I think one of the things that the poll reveals, and some of our conversations have
been about is that, you know, he really does well among evangelicals who have a high level
of anxiety in regard to the changing cultural norms
and mores shifting attitudes around same sex marriage and sexual morality
more broadly.
But also, evangelicals have sort of a more authoritarian disposition or sort of more
comfortable with that.
We see his support a lot higher too.
And then, Emily Eakin's [SP] work has shown that, you know, high attending of evangelicals
are actually less supportive of Trump.
But one of the interesting things is, you know, how many of those folks are actually
gonna abstain in 2020?
Like that would be not that many.
Joanna: Yeah, yeah, I'm not sure.
I think there was some other research mentioned at the panel about gender roles, which I thought
was interesting.
Favorability or support for Trump, or approval, approval for Trump, I believe, was a huge
divide between those that want modern gender roles, essentially, not having, I would assume
kind of the woman be the homemaker, the man going out to earn money, or even that hetero
normative attitude, not having to be a man and a woman.
I think it was around 50% of people had an approval rating of Trump, whereas people who
wanted the more traditional roles, it was 100%.
That to me is really revealing about who Trump represents, as a person.
Very masculine, very manly, you know.
Dan: That's like his whole persona right?
Joanna: Yes, yeah.
Dan: And sort of the tough guy, unapologetic image, sort of like a throwback, sort of masculine
trope, in some ways.
And if you look at where he's strongest, it is with, you know, white working class men.
And that's been sort of the backbone of his support.
And you look at some of the folks who've been less certain or less supportive, even amongst
constituencies that support him.
So white evangelicals, right, like they strongly support him, but women, there's a significant
gender gap, women are less likely...white evangelical women are less likely to support
him.
If you looked at the mess around putting the children deportation centers separated from...
Joanna: Family separation, yep.
Dan: Yeah, separating children from their parents, it was a lot of white evangelical
women actually, who said like, "No, no, this is not okay."
And we saw a really significant gender gap there.
Joanna: Yeah, I would also argue that Republican women are more likely to adhere to these traditional
gender roles, and are used to seeing a man in charge.
They're used to taking direction from a man.
That's just natural.
Maybe they don't like know it consciously.
But subconsciously, that's, I think, very, like threaded within their ideology and their
upbringing.
Which is why Hillary Clinton, as an individual, as a strong woman, who, you know, had her
issues as a candidate, but was a female.
I think that a lot of Republican women and white evangelical women were turned off to
her, because of the fact she was a woman.
And they are used to seeing women in powerful roles.
And you could say that about white evangelical women, because women are not allowed to ascend
to certain positions that men are within denominations.
Dan: The most amazing thing about Trump is, well, one we can't stop talking about him.
Joanna: Yes.
Dan: But also I think he is the reason we're talking about so many of these issues, right?
That for the entire Obama era, you know, how much were we talking about gender discrimination,
sexual assault, right?
These were not national topics of conversation, conversation, of race in America is very different.
In some way, I think Trump is responsible for a lot of the types of conversations we're
having, like right now.
Joanna: I absolutely, agree.
I think that the Me Too movement might have happened if Trump was out of office, if Clinton
got elected, but it would not be happening to the degree that it is happening right now.
It's an interesting reaction.
Dan: Right.
Joanna: But I think that there was a lot of frustration out of progressive women, maybe
even more moderate women after the election.
And the Me Too movement, it's not that it was a reaction to that...
Dan: I think it might have been on some level.
Joanna: The height of it, you know, like how big it got could be a reaction, you know,
you saw the women's rally, etc.
Dan: Right, that was definitely like the women's rallies that we've been seeing, and they're
still going on, was an absolute, like, you know, reaction to what's happening in the
White House.
Joanna: One hundred percent yeah,
Dan: Well, and looking ahead to 2020 really, there's a decent chance, maybe none of the
few candidates were pointing that well, at this point, I think the top two are Biden
and Bernie.
Joanna: Yeah.
Dan: But Warren, I think is still in double digits.
So it's not out of the realm of possibility that Democrats nominated a woman and that
would be really interesting, right, to sort of see that...
Joanna: The marathoner, they're calling her the marathoner.
Dan: Really?
Joanna: Yeah, because she might have not peaked too soon, but called it too soon.
Dan: Yeah.
Joanna: But she's kind of slow and steady.
She's the turtle in this metaphor, where like everyone else is the hare.
And like she might actually be able to essentially outlast everyone, because she is such a strong
figure who I believe a lot of people can relate to in a way that they wouldn't be able to
relate to Hillary Clinton.
She's also Methodist, and has been very outspoken about her faith.
And I think that religion is...
Dan: That's characterized a lot of the Democratic primary, I think people are pretty surprised
about that.
Joanna: Yes, absolutely.
I mean, what?
A progressive person that's religious, like a lot of people, that's stumping a lot.
And I think that almost everyone that's announced, kind of like, bigger names that have announced,
have made religion a key part of their announcement, or made religion a key part of the early parts
of their campaign.
Cory Booker was in a church, I believe in his video that announced his candidacy.
Kamala Harris mentioned, I think, like one of the opening sentences when she said, "I
announce my run for presidency was with the grace of God."
She's an extremely religious woman.
Dan: Yeah.
Joanna: Warren, I think was in a church just a few weeks ago in some campaign video.
So religion is...
Dan: And of course Mayor Pete, right?
Joanna: Oh, my gosh.
Dan: Who's gotten the lion's share of the attention, I think, on the terms of being
religious and a Democrat.
But I mean, obviously, a lot of other candidates are as well.
Joanna: In the Midwest.
Dan: And it's a big, I mean, it's a big contrast, right?
between Trump, right, who, you know, by his own admission, doesn't attend very often.
And some of these really progressive Democrats who are making religion sort of front and
center about not just what they do, but who they are.
Joanna: But even Pence too, Pence and Buttigieg, I noticed you used Pete.
Dan: Yes, Mayor Pete.
Joanna: it is a very difficult name to wrap like your tongue around.
But he is challenging what the public thinks of when I think of Christianity.
And me, that's a good thing, thinking about one topic and believing that if you don't
follow this or do this, you don't fit within that very specific framework, you know, Christianity,
like there's a reason why theology exists.
You can read the Bible and holy books in a variety of different ways.
And he's kind of offering a new way for people to view that side of religion.
It's not as if this is something new.
It's just something that's kind of coming out of the woodwork in these interesting ways.
Dan: And it's, I don't think it's any coincidence that he's young, right?
He's like, 37, 38.
Joanna: Yeah.
Dan: And we're seeing a kind of generational divide even in the poll, right?
We have that question where we asked folks if they wanted to keep sort of the traditional
beliefs of their church or domination, whether they wanted to adjust them or adapt totally
new ones.
And even among some of the most conservative traditions, you're seeing the younger folks
saying, "Well, we'd actually be open to revisiting some of these these ideas, around particularly
human sexuality."
Joanna: Yeah, it was adjust or adapt, right?
So it's kind of like those three choices, preserve the current teachings, adjust them
to fit kind of newer ideas, and then adapt completely new ones.
And I believe within white evangelicals is two-thirds, preserve, preserve, preserve,
all they wanted to do was preserve those teachings.
And then within main lines, I believe it was still a plurality that said preserve, but
still a large chunk either said adjust or adapt.
And we're seeing this with kind of things that are going on with the UMC right now.
Dan: Yeah.
But again, among younger, evangelicals.
Joanna: Yeah.
Dan: Which we didn't breakout in this poll, but the Pew Research Center did in the study
they did.
And there's a huge age divide, where younger evangelicals are much less likely to say,
"We need to preserve."
And you're seeing this a little bit in the Mormon church as well, where younger folks
are really pressing to revisit some of the teachings around homosexuality.
Joanna: Yeah, but what's interesting is they're only around LGBT issues.
Dan: Yeah.
Joanna: You know, I mean, like, I feel like immigration is also one of the larger issues
and so is healthcare, access to healthcare.
Dan: It's the biggest.
Joanna: Yes, exactly.
And like, you could apply teachings about caring for the poor, or caring for the other
to those.
But we're not necessarily seeing that as strongly as we're seeing it for LGBT issues and issues
kind of surrounding that community, which I think is kind of interesting.
I guess we did see with kind of immigration.
Dan: Yeah, I mean...
Joanna: The kind of the family separation policies.
Dan: One of the things that I think is striking in Mayor Pete's, his approach is trying to
sort of own these spaces that are particularly conservative, these ideas right, about freedom,
right?
And when he talks about his marriage, it's about, "I had the freedom to marry the person
I loved."
And freedom and faith, right?
These are things again, typically we think about conservatives, Republicans, when we
think of those ideas, And he's sort of trying to reclaim that for the Democrats.
And we'll see if he's successful, but it is kind of an interesting debate that we're gonna
have.
And again, someone like that would be a really interesting foil to Donald Trump.
And, you know, how would a debate like that even work where we're talking about religious
and character, and moral values.
Again, something that, you know, 10 years, 15 years ago, it would be weird coming out
of a Democrats' mouth.
Joanna: That's so interesting imagining a debate between Buttigieg and Trump.
I don't even know how that would go.
He would start citing passages in the Bible and Trump would not know what to do.
And then what...
Dan: Two Corinthians.
Joanna: Right, Two Corinthians.
And then what would white evangelical Protestants, how would they react to that?
Do you know what I mean?
Like, the...
Dan: Their politics, I think would rule the day.
There's, you know, that question about do people, when they evaluate Trump, you know,
look at their Bible and look at how consistent it is with some of the Bible verses?
And that's not how people really come to these kind of decisions.
So it's really more about like, you know, does he wave the red flag, does he wave the
blue flag if I'm a Democrat.
And I think that for some of this stuff is like, top of mind.
Joanna: Did you see my piece about most people thought it was inappropriate that Trump signed
Bibles?
Dan: No.
Interesting.
Joanna: Most people including majorities of Republicans and including majorities, I think
we just broke up Christians, thought it was inappropriate.
And we were specific to say, the cover of the Bible, which is different than signing
an inscription, kind of on the first page, which I know is very common, especially within
Southern culture, is you give someone a Bible, you graduated, here's your Bible, you know,
congratulations.
But he signed the cover, which is a little bit more rare.
Most people...
Dan: Yeah, but they still like him and they're still gonna vote for him.
Joanna: Yeah, they still like him and they're still going to vote for him.
I'm not sure what he could do within this community, to lose favor with them.
I honestly don't know.
Dan: I mean, well, according to Jerry Falwell, Jr., President of Liberty University, nothing.
Joanna: Oh, gosh, yes.
Dan: So I mean, I think there's a lot of that, right, where evangelical leaders are, you
know, in this current environment where they think they're getting their butts kicked,
culturally, you know, whether it's marijuana legalization, or same sex marriage being legal,
you know, changing attitudes on premarital sex.
There's this view that, you know, particularly the youths...
Joanna: The youths.
Dan: ...are moving away from where they are.
And so I think, you know, because they're sort of feeling that kind of pressure in the
sort of cultural environment, they are, like, much more open to that stuff.
Joanna: So that makes me wonder, because I know that we've talked about this before,
about gauging identification within evangelical communities.
And correct me if I'm wrong, I believe that there's not a shedding of the evangelical
label, but fewer people, maybe there are fewer young people are identifying as evangelical,
but are still evangelical.
Is that right?
Or is that like...
Dan: There's been a lot of talk about sort of the reclamation of the Christian label
and people sort of shedding evangelical identity because it's become sort of synonymous with
the kind of support that Trump gets from the evangelical Christian community, I should
say, the white evangelical community.
But I haven't seen it anywhere in the data.
I mean, white evangelical Protestants in terms of their numbers are pretty similar year over
year, we're seeing a modest downtick, but overall, I don't think there's a lot of support
for that.
Joanna: Interesting.
Dan: All right, well, I think we've pretty much covered it.
We solved all these problems.
You figured everything else at this point.
Joanna: For now, yes, until next time.
Dan: All right.
Well, hopefully we'll to have you back again soon.
Joanna: Yep.
Dan: All right.
Joanna: Awesome.
Dan: Hey, everyone.
That's end of our discussion with Joanna Piacenza from Morning Consult.
Thanks for watching.
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