Thursday, January 11, 2018

Most Christians No Longer Support Trump


A year ago, most American Christians supported Donald Trump.

Now, most do not.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Site your source please.

Gruntled said...

The linked text takes you there.

Anonymous said...

While your statement is at least as true as a limited sub-set of the entire data-set supplied in this particular poll, is it also an example of "Cherry Picking" statistics to argue one’s personal agenda?

What I see is that there is a consistent negative trend across all groups polled ranging from 1% to 12%. As would be expected, the most significant declines are of those groups that are either described as Democrat or are traditionally left leaning / liberal. Which the article says is normal for any president at this point in his term.

The article also states the following:

“Despite losing some support across many groups, Mr. Trump remains popular with many of the constituencies that helped usher him into the White House. His largest declines were among groups that never supported him much to begin with.”

“While most presidents see their popularity fade after an initial honeymoon period, Mr. Trump came into office with record-low approval among independents and members of the opposite party (in this case, Democrats), and the decline started more or less immediately, said Charles Franklin, a professor and pollster at Marquette University Law School in Milwaukee.”

“Despite losing support across all religions, more than half of Protestants and evangelical Christians continue to approve of the job Mr. Trump is doing as president. He is least popular with people who are not Christian.”

Are these political polls even reliable? Three examples to the contrary: First, Mitch McConnel beat Allison Lundergrand Grimes in the US Senate race; Second, Governon Matt Bevins defeated Jack Conway in the gubernatorial race; Lastly, President Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton. All of these are very recent examples of conservative Republicans winning races in spite of the predictions of the polls. Is it perhaps true that the “silent majority” do not participate in polls, but instead wait to voice their choice on election day?

Gruntled said...

My particular interest as a sociologist is with what most people do. In this poll, several groups changed from "most people support" to "most people oppose."

For the past generation there has been a sustained effort to equate "Christian" with "conservative." This was never true, but has become a more common theme recently. This poll shows that most of the Christian majority does not, in fact, support the self-proclaimed conservative president.

What I hope is that we can broaden the narrative of Christians and politics, so that the Christian left, such as that represented by Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Tim Keane, is understood to be as normal and obvious as the Christian right.

Anonymous said...

Again, Does your source not state as a direct quote:

“Despite losing support across all religions, more than half of Protestants and evangelical Christians continue to approve of the job Mr. Trump is doing as president. He is least popular with people who are not Christian.”

Is the above quote in your source not in direct conflict with your statement, "Most Christians No Longer Support Trump".

As asked previously, how do perceive the accuracy of the current political polls?
What is the margin of error of this particular poll?

Gruntled said...

There is no conflict, because neither evangelicals nor Protestants (an overlapping set) constitute all American Christians.

When you add together Mainline Protestants, Black Protestants, and white Evangelical Protestants, plus the quarter+ of American Christians who are Catholic, and the tiny slice of Orthodox and other Christians, a majority do not support Trump.

This is a change since he was elected.