The Church is ‘secret weapon’ to winning 2024 presidential election: researcher

‘Very few Evangelicals are doing what’s necessary to mobilize the Church to vote for, not against, their values’

By Ryan Foley, The Christian Post | Sunday, October 13, 2024

A Christian researcher is warning that churches are not doing enough to ensure that faith-based voters make their voices heard in the 2024 presidential election, pointing to the impact of Evangelicals not voting in the 2020 election had on the outcome.

Craig Huey, a researcher with a marketing background who has written several books, including The Christian Voter: How to Vote For, Not Against, Your Values to Transform Culture and Politics, shared data about the number of Evangelicals who didn’t vote in the six swing states in the 2020 presidential election. The six major swing states in both the 2020 and 2024 presidential elections are: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Worth a combined 87 votes in the Electoral College, the candidate who wins most or all of them will emerge victorious in the 2024 election. Polling of the battleground states shows a close race between Vice President and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris and former President and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.

Overall, Huey found that about 6.9 million Evangelical voters residing in the swing states did not vote in the 2020 presidential election. Huey’s data finds that the number of Evangelicals who did not vote exceeded President Joe Biden’s margin of victory in five of the six swing states he won in 2020. Estimating that 84% of them would have voted for Trump, Huey’s research reveals that they would have swung the outcome of the election had they voted.

In the 2020 presidential election, Biden won Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Victories in those states helped him secure 306 electoral votes to Trump’s 232, thereby exceeding the 270 electoral votes required to clinch the presidency.

Data shared with The Christian Post showed that in Arizona, 730,624 Evangelicals did not vote in the 2020 presidential election. Biden won the state by 10,457 votes. Arizona has 11 electoral votes.

In Georgia, Huey found that 1,349,454 Evangelicals did not vote. Biden carried the state, which has 16 electoral votes, by 11,779 votes.

In Michigan, which had 16 electoral votes in the 2020 presidential election but now only has 15 due to reapportionment following the 2020 United States Census, 1,338,126 Evangelicals did not vote. Biden won the state by 154,188 votes.

In Pennsylvania, which had 20 electoral votes in the 2020 presidential election but now only has 19 following reapportionment, 1,494,611 Evangelicals did not vote. Biden carried the state by a margin of 80,555 votes.

In Wisconsin, which has 10 electoral votes, 873,854 Evangelicals abstained from the 2020 election. Biden won the state by 20,682 votes.

Even in North Carolina, the one swing state that Trump won in 2016, Evangelicals not voting could make the difference in 2024. Trump only carried the state, which now has 16 electoral college votes but had just 15 in 2020, by around 74,500 votes. Huey measured the number of Evangelicals living in the state who did not vote at 1,195,729.

In an interview with CP, Huey said that “as we take a look at the Pew Research, for example, we’re able to find out how many Evangelicals are in all 50 states.”

“And so, we took the number of Evangelicals that were in those six swing states to see how many Evangelicals there are, and there’s a number of exit polls after every election that CNN and [The Associated Press] and different groups do,” he said.

After looking at the number of “self-proclaimed white Evangelicals” and comparing that data to “the number of Evangelicals within the state,” Huey found “6.9 million born-again Evangelical Christians who proclaimed Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior” and believe “that He died on the cross and rose from the dead” who did not vote in 2020.

He believes that whether or not the large number of Evangelicals who sat out in 2020 do so again in 2024 depends on the actions taken by American pastors leading up to the election.

Huey told CP that it’s “the Church that holds the answer to this upcoming election,” suggesting that pastors have an obligation to ensure that their congregation is actively engaged and prepared to vote.

“It’s the Church that is the secret weapon to winning the election, and yet the pastors are quiet. Very few Evangelicals are doing what’s necessary to mobilize the Church to vote for, not against, their values,” Huey said.

Huey pointed to the Evangelical vote as the decisive factor that enabled Trump to win the 2016 election while causing him to lose in 2020.

“There were more Evangelicals that turned out in 2016,” he explained. “It was by maybe 4 percent to 5 percent less Evangelicals voted, but that’s millions. And that was significant enough in those swing states to have made the difference.”

“Part of it was because the Evangelicals in 2016 recognized Trump had a broken, flawed personality,” he said. “They recognized that there was a disconnect between who he was and what his policy was but he was one who held promise for turning things around.”

According to Huey, “Evangelical pastors, the nonprofit groups, the megachurches, they got behind Trump, they told their congregations they had to get out and vote. They did massive door-to-door in Wisconsin, in some of the swing states in 2016. That did not happen in 2020.”

“So when the Republican candidate doesn’t have the Evangelical support, that’s a significant amount of vote that can sway the election one way or the other,” he added.

Huey expressed concern that several Evangelical pastors were not properly informing their congregations about the upcoming election, or saying that “there was an election,, but it doesn’t really matter who you vote for” and that “what matters is that you stand for Jesus Christ.”

Huey cited these actions as “completely suppressing the whole voting bloc within that church.” When asked why he thinks a large number of Evangelicals don’t vote, Huey brought the conversation back to the role of church leaders, saying that “the pastors are so silent.”

Huey contended that some pastors remain silent because of fear of facing retaliation under the Johnson Amendment, which makes churches refraining from explicitly endorsing a candidate a condition for tax-exempt status. He also pointed to concerns about angering a proportion of the congregation with political views in opposition to those of the pastor as another possible reason.

The researcher also detailed how churches have played an active role in American history, citing as examples the American Revolution and the abolitionist movement.

“Who were the ones who spoke up that helped spark the American Revolution? It was the pastors and they mobilized the churches,” he said.

“Who was it that spoke up against slavery? It was the Evangelical pastors and they mobilized their church to help make a change with slavery. The church should be the conscience of the community, and it has abandoned that role.”

Huey described how he was “very concerned” about Evangelical turnout in 2024, lamenting that he doesn’t see “any effort to mobilize” Christian voters on behalf of pastors.

“I think the amount of effort reaching Evangelicals is sadly lacking,” he stated. “There’s a lot of people talking and bragging about what they want to do and what they plan to do, but in actuality, they’re not able to get either the resources or the organization to be able to do it. And so, it’s disturbing that we’re not further along than we are.”

“Every church should be registering voters,” he concluded. “But very few churches have any voter registration effort. And quite frankly, every pastor should say, ‘raise your hands if you’re not registered to vote.’ And then pass out the voter registration and say, ‘Here, fill this out. We’ll take it in.’ Every pastor should make sure there’s a table set up in the foyer letting people register but they’re not.”

Voter egistration and outreach efforts have emerged at some churches in past elections, most notably at Calvary Chapel Chino Hills, a megachurch located in Southern California. Last year, the church held a workshop encouraging other churches to follow in its footsteps. It contained information about how churches can engage in ballot collecting for churches as well as voter registration laws and “legal dos and don’ts for churches.”