Doug Pagitt, a Minneapolis-based evangelical pastor, predicted in a Saturday opinion article for MSNBC that Vice President Kamala Harris has the potential to shatter former President Donald Trump’s grip on white evangelical voters and “break the back of the MAGA [Make America Great Again] movement.”
Pagitt, executive director of Vote Common Good, in his opinion article titled, “How I’ve been convincing Christians they don’t have to vote Republican,” contends that Harris could receive the highest level of evangelical support since former President Jimmy Carter garnered roughly half the evangelical vote in 1976.
“If we come together and don’t leave these folks to Trump, I think it’s possible for Harris to receive the highest level of evangelical support since Jimmy Carter got roughly half the evangelical vote in 1976,” Pagitt wrote. “And if that were to happen, it would break the back of the MAGA movement.”
Newsweek has contacted Harris’ and Trump’s campaign via email on Sunday for comment.
However, historical voting data suggests that such a dramatic shift would be unprecedented in recent electoral history. According to the Pew Research Center, white evangelical Christians have consistently backed Republican candidates by wide margins in recent presidential elections. In 2016, 80 percent of self-identified white, born-again/evangelical Christians voted for Trump, while just 16 percent voted for Hillary Clinton.
Pagitt’s organization, Vote Common Good, focuses on encouraging religious voters, particularly evangelicals and Catholics, to prioritize the common good over party allegiance when casting their ballots. The group’s efforts in key battleground states like Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania aim to sway enough movable religious voters to tip the scales in Harris’ favor.
The pastor’s optimism stems in part from what he sees as a growing disillusionment among some evangelical voters with Trump’s behavior and policies. A poll that Vote Common Good commissioned in 2020 showed that in swing states Trump’s lack of kindness was driving evangelical and Catholic voters away in large enough numbers to potentially affect the outcome of the election.
“Voters typically realize that the way they vote reflects on them,” Pagitt wrote in Saturday’s opinion article. “And those religious voters who defected from Trump didn’t like the way his unkindness reflected on them, whether it be putting migrant children in cages, the way he treats women, the way he treats the press, the way he treats nearly everyone who left his administration and the way he treats democracy itself.”
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While some movement at the margins is possible, historical data suggests that dramatic shifts in religious voting blocs are rare. The Pew Research Center’s analysis of 2016 exit polls showed little change in the political alignments of U.S. religious groups compared to previous elections.
Groups that traditionally backed Republican candidates, such as white born-again or evangelical Christians and white Catholics, strongly supported Trump, while groups that typically favored Democrats, including religious “nones,” Hispanic Catholics, and Jews, firmly backed Clinton.
Pagitt writes that even small changes in evangelical support could prove decisive in closely contested states. He points to Kent County, Michigan, home to Grand Rapids and several Christian universities, as an example of what’s possible. After an intensive outreach campaign by Vote Common Good in 2020, the county swung from supporting Trump by 3 points in 2016 to backing Biden by 6 points in 2020, a 9-point swing.
The Harris campaign appears to be taking note of this potential opportunity. The selection of Minnesota Governor Tim Walz to be the vice president’s running mate is seen by some as a nod to Midwestern religious voters. However, Pagitt writes that more needs to be done to actively court the evangelical vote.
“Democrats more broadly need to embrace the idea that evangelicals, and especially white male evangelicals, are worth winning and can be won without the party compromising its values,” he explained.
Pagitt and his organization are planning an extensive grassroots effort to reach these voters in key battleground states. Their approach includes voter rallies, roundtables, billboard campaigns, and training Democratic candidates on how to engage with faith voters.
“We need to tell them that what Democrats are pushing for lines up with the values evangelicals hold dear — making the world better and bringing people together,” Pagitt wrote. “Many Christians are heartbroken at the idea that they have to choose between a faith that’s meaningful to them and a political identity that has been wedded to it. They don’t know what to do, and we need to help them separate those two identities.”
