Simon Cox Blog: Despite Mike Pence, Most Evangelical Pastors Are Not Ready to Vote Trump

Wednesday, 5 October 2016

Despite Mike Pence, Most Evangelical Pastors Are Not Ready to Vote Trump

A plurality remain undecided, with pastors split over which candidate characteristic is most important.

Political endorsements by pastors have been few and far between this election season. That may be because the most popular candidate among pastors is “I don’t know.”

Despite vice presidential candidate Mike Pence’s mission to assuage evangelical doubts about Donald Trump, a plurality of evangelical senior pastors (44%) remained undecided last month about which candidate to vote for, according to a new survey from LifeWay Research.

Meanwhile, almost 4 in 10 plan to vote for Trump (38%), while about 1 in 10 plans to vote for Hillary Clinton (9%). Four percent support Gary Johnson. Two percent do not plan to vote.

In addition, most evangelical pastors see no need for Christians to vote only for a candidate who has a reasonable chance of winning. A majority also believe that Christians can vote their conscience and end up supporting different candidates.

And only 3 evangelical pastors in 100 have endorsed a candidate from the pulpit.

These are among the findings of a new survey of 1,000 Protestant senior pastors conducted August 22 to September 16. (Evangelical and mainline pastors were categorized based on self-identification.)

Most pastors are ambivalent about the major party candidates, said Scott McConnell, executive director of LifeWay Research. “Donald Trump does better with pastors than Hillary Clinton,” he said. “But both candidates are still less popular than ‘undecided.’”

Here is the breakdown for Protestant pastors overall:

Evangelical pastors overwhelmingly believe voting is a Christian duty. Almost all (94%) say American Christians have a biblical responsibility to vote. That includes pastors of all denominational stripes—from Pentecostal (98%) and Baptist ...