Pastors twice as likely to support Trump over Harris but many are undecided
(CP) Twice as many pastors say they plan to support former President Donald Trump over Vice President Kamala Harris in the upcoming election, although many are reluctant to share their preferences, according to a new survey.
Lifeway Research released a report Tuesday based on responses collected from 1,003 Protestant pastors in the United States between Aug. 8 and Sept. 3. With an error margin of +3.3 percentage points, the survey examines pastors' views on the upcoming presidential election, finding that 50% of respondents plan to support Trump while 24% intend to vote for Harris.
A significant share of pastors (23%) indicated they were undecided on who they planned to vote for in the election.
"We ask pastors about many things going on in the culture today and they are willing to provide their opinion," Lifeway Research Executive Director Scott McConnell said in a statement. "However, the growing number of pastors unwilling to respond with their voting intentions shows how sensitive or divisive politics has become in some churches."
The report found that exactly one-half of those surveyed identified as Republicans, while 25% characterized themselves as independents and 18% described themselves as Democrats.
"Out of all the descriptors of pastors, their own political party preference is the best predictor of how they will vote," McConnell maintained. "Denominational groups often lean one way politically, but pastors must minister alongside many clergy who don't share their political views.
"The same is true within their own congregations. In a culture that increasingly doesn't want to tolerate people with different political views, pastors lead churches that strive for unity centered on faith."
The findings are similar to Lifeway's 2020 survey, which found 53% of Protestant pastors planned to vote for Trump in that year's election, while 21% planned to support Joe Biden and 22% were undecided. In 2016, four in 10 pastors said they were still undecided as of September of that year, while nearly a third (32%) planned to vote for Trump and 19% planned to vote for Democrat Hillary Clinton.
In 2024, Pentecostals had the highest share of respondents who planned to support Trump (65%), followed by Baptists (64%), non-denominational Christians (64%), members of the Church of Christ (55%), Lutherans (48%), Methodists (26%) and Presbyterians (24%). A much higher share of self-described Evangelical pastors (61%) signaled their intention to support Trump than their mainline Protestant counterparts (30%).
In addition to asking pastors which candidate they prefer in the election, the survey also asked respondents to identify "which characteristics of the candidate are important to you in deciding how to cast your vote."
Eighty-five percent of those surveyed listed the "ability to maintain national security" as a significant determinant behind their decision on who to support in the election.
Other characteristics more than 80% of pastors see as essential qualities in a candidate are their "ability to protect religious freedom" (84%), their "position on foreign policy" (83%), their "ability to improve the economy" (83%), their "position on immigration" (81%) and their "position on abortion" (80%).
Large majorities of respondents also pointed to a candidate's "personal character" (79%) and "likely Supreme Court nominees" (75%) as factors that influenced their decision.
While 71% of those surveyed view a candidate's "ability to address racial injustice" as important and 70% of respondents feel the same way about a candidate's "position on [the] size and role of government," less than half (38%) placed a similar level of weight on a candidate's "ability to address climate change." When asked what they thought was the most important single factor influencing their vote, a plurality (24%) said they consider a candidate's "personal character" especially crucial.
Other popular choices for the most important characteristic in a presidential candidate include their views on abortion (18%), "ability to protect religious freedom" (16%) and "ability to improve the economy" (12%). Less than 5% of respondents listed all other candidate characteristics as the most important factor in determining their vote in the 2024 election.
"Pastors are not single-issue voters. They care deeply about where presidential candidates stand on many issues," McConnell stated. "There are moral dimensions to all of the characteristics that could be selected, and pastors did not all pick the same characteristic as most important."
