Two years into a Trump administration that social conservatives hoped would bring significant victories on abortion and other evangelical Christian voters’ priorities, some are unimpressed by what the president has delivered. The lack of enthusiasm has been exacerbated by a national campaign outreach strategy that seems to be targeting everybody but them.
The bottom line? Evangelical Christians feel overlooked.
The discontent among the Republican Party’s most loyal voting bloc raises an uncomfortable question ahead of Election Day: Will evangelicals remain faithful to show up when their party needs them?
“There’s a lot of people who feel like this administration has got deaf ears to their social conservative concerns,” said one conservative operative, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak candidly.
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Republicans concerned about evangelical turnout pointed to the cumulative effect of an administration that they said has downplayed social conservative priorities, such as anti-abortion measures, and enacted policies that made some evangelicals uncomfortable — particularly its combative approach to immigration.
Party strategists warn that — coupled with concerns from most voters about the rising costs of gas and groceries, worries of government corruption, and dissatisfaction with the Iran war — could be a recipe for disaster.
“When evangelical voters make up a substantial chunk of that base, and they’re not overly enthusiastic, they’re not excited, they’re frustrated, they don’t necessarily feel like they got what they asked for,” said Cole Muzio, a Republican operative who focuses on Christian outreach. “That tends to affect enthusiasm and participation.”
Unlike recent election cycles, abortion issues have played less of a central role in campaign messaging — candidates instead have focused on affordability issues. But even before campaigning began in earnest, anti-abortion activists felt betrayed by the administration’s ambivalence. The Health and Human Services Department hasn’t sought to restrict access to abortion pills — and even approved a new, generic version of mifepristone — while activists remain skeptical of some HHS officials’ anti-abortion bona fides.
Some had also hoped that the Justice Department would enforce a nationwide abortion ban through the Comstock Act. It hasn’t happened.
The issue has been historically important to evangelicals. The Public Religion Research Institute found in a survey conducted just after the Supreme Court handed down its landmark abortion decision in 2022 that 37% of evangelical voters would only cast ballots for candidates who share their views on abortion.
“If you are a single-issue voter,” the conservative operative said, “you might just sit out” this election.
Another sore spot for evangelical voters has been the administration’s use of family separation and the killings of American citizens by immigration officers. Walter Kim, the president of the National Association of Evangelical Voters, said candidates must balance promoting immigration enforcement and family values to appeal to evangelicals.
“If a candidate could advocate for … strong borders,” Kim said, “while simultaneously recognizing, no, evangelicals strongly do not want family separation.”
He added that many candidates are missing the nuance on these issues, and some mistakenly view the community as a monolith or a “caricature” despite the bloc’s diversity of views.
“Evangelicals are looking for candidates who are able to hold a bit more complexity and engagement with the evangelical community,” Kim said.
White House spokesperson Lauren Bis said in a statement to The Washington Sun that the Trump administration has delivered on the president’s promises.
“President Trump is the ultimate turnout driver for the MAGA base,” Bis said. “He promised to secure our border, remove criminal illegal aliens from American communities, restore religious liberty, and reverse the disastrous policies of the previous administration.”
The White House released last month a list of what Trump has done for religious Americans, including creating the White House Faith Office and Centers for Faith in federal agencies, as well as establishing the Religious Liberty Commission.
Operatives who work to activate conservative Christian voters described a nationalized campaign environment in which the races are a referendum on the White House and the spending is being decided in Washington.
Multiple operatives who spoke with The Sun said that they anticipated evangelical turnout to be on par with previous midterm elections. Some of them, though, said even the most reliable voters say the party’s broader campaign strategy has failed to reach social conservatives effectively.
“I think they nod toward it,” said Chad Connelly, founder of Faith Wins, a Christian political group. “But how much do you think any campaign spends on turning out the evangelical vote?”
“They do the TV ads and the digital ads,” Connelly added. But he said it isn’t authentic outreach, where they “speak the evangelical language.”
Some operatives and activists disputed that more evangelicals could stay home than in a typical midterm. Eric Teetsel, the CEO and publisher of Chronicles Magazine, said there was no particular reason to expect evangelical voting to have a greater downturn than other groups this year.
“To the extent evangelicals don’t turn out, it will be because of the same reasons all other GOP voters don’t turn out,” Teetsel said.
Ralph Reed, founder of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, told The Sun that he doesn’t see evidence of the administration’s posture on abortion suppressing turnout, though he wished they would be more demonstrably pro-life on the campaign trail.
“I am a little concerned that I think the Republican Party writ large have been fearful of the life issue after the Dobbs decision and the 2022 and 2024 elections,” Reed said. “They are a little bit gun-shy about ever bringing up the life issue, and I think that’s a mistake.”
Money from cash-rich establishment groups affiliated with President Donald Trump and Republican congressional leaders has formed the spine of the Republican campaign. But some outreach efforts and ads — paid for and directed by party leadership — have struggled to connect with the priorities of evangelicals.
When asked for comment, the Republican National Committee directed The Sun to Lorenzo Sewell, the senior pastor at 180 Church in Detroit. Sewell welcomed Trump to his church during the 2024 presidential campaign, and he spoke at the Republican National Convention and prayed at Trump’s second inauguration.
Sewell told The Sun that any frustration from evangelicals is rooted in frustration with the media and polling, not with the president. He said that frustration wouldn’t keep them from voting.
“There is no pastor that has more influence than me,” Sewell said, noting that the increased influence was because of Trump.
Sewell said there has been grassroots action among faith leaders, including a gathering of about 150 of them along with developers this month in Grand Rapids, Michigan, to push for economic opportunity zones. “We’re seeing momentum,” he said.
For any evangelical considering sitting out this election, Sewell had a message: Staying home would reinforce a narrative that evangelicals don’t vote well in the midterms.
“You’re expecting the president to do something when Christians don’t even vote,” Sewell said, referring to disappointment from evangelicals that Trump didn’t push for an abortion ban. “Muslims vote more than Christians.”
Muzio said that beyond the scattered messaging that some evangelicals say misses the mark on their priorities, having the messaging come from outside groups that some voters perceived as inauthentic hasn’t helped.
“The messaging nationally sucks,” Muzio said. “A lot of these national groups, it’s so astroturf and it’s so negative, nasty or unreal.”
He used the Texas Republican Senate nominee Ken Paxton as an example, noting Paxton’s history of corruption allegations and his wife filing for divorce last year “on biblical grounds.”
“You can be sold on, ‘Hey, this is the choice, and in order to best reflect your values in D.C., this is the best choice to make,’” Muzio said of Paxton. “But you can’t be sold the person.”
Trump made his pitch to evangelicals during his Kansas rally on Monday by relaying an apparent conversation with a Dallas-area pastor. Trump said the pastor had believed Trump was going to lead Christians to a period of prosperity in the faith that “nobody else can do.”
“And he turned out to be right,” Trump told the crowd.
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