NEW YORK (AP) – President Donald Trump’s strong support from white evangelicals is handing Democrats a challenge: How do they connect with a Christian voting bloc so strongly identified with Trump? It’s a question that comes up less often during the Democratic primary but promises to become more critical heading into the general election.
And even though Democratic presidential candidates have already shown they’re open to talking about how their faith affects their values, the party’s standard-bearer will have to balance outreach to evangelicals with policies on abortion and other issues that often clash with most evangelicals’ perspectives.
Trump won a clear majority of white evangelical Protestant votes in 2016, and about 8 in 10 of that group approved of his job performance in an AP-NORC poll conducted last month. But those evangelicals’ alignment with the Republican Party predated Trump and has risen steadily since 2009, according to data from the nonpartisan Pew Research Center.
