NPR October 26, 2020
Four years ago, white evangelicals rallied behind Donald Trump's presidential candidacy, and he reveled in their adulation.
"The evangelicals love me, and I love them," Trump said repeatedly on the campaign trail. In his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, evangelicals were the only faith group he singled out for thanks, saying their support was "a big reason for me being here tonight."
In the general election, however, it was not the evangelicals who carried Trump to victory but Catholics, a group he had rarely mentioned in his speeches.
People were quite amazed at the overall impact that the white evangelicals had in the election, but I think what was missed was the critical role of the Catholic voters," says Mark Rozell, dean of the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University.
Despite losing the popular vote, Trump reached the presidency in large part because he won traditionally Democratic Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, all states in which Catholics outnumber evangelicals by significant margins.
"It was the Catholic vote that won those states for Donald Trump," says Tim Huelskamp, a former Republican congressman from Kansas now serving as an adviser to the Catholics for Trump movement, a coalition that did not formally exist in 2016.
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