Half Of Evangelicals Stayed Home In GOP Election Rout

Exit poll data from tens of thousands of voters allow analysts to investigate narratives surrounding the 2026 election with empirical data. For example, was the Republican collapse due in part to a loss of support from evangelicals? The answer is both no and yes.

On one hand, evangelicals supported Republicans at a rate similar to previous elections. According to the 2026 exit polls, 82% of voters who self-identified as “white evangelical or born-again Christian” voted Republican. That compares to 82% in 2024, 83% in 2022, 76% in 2020, 75% in 2018, and 81% in 2016. Even before that, 78% of evangelicals voted Republican in 2012, 74% in 2008, and 78% in 2004. Evangelical voting patterns have been remarkably steady this century, with a modest uptick in support for Republicans in the Trump era.

On the other hand, evangelicals plummeted in 2026 to 17% of the electorate. The evangelical voting share has also remained remarkably steady across time, with evangelicals providing 23% of votes in 2004, 26% in 2008, 26% in 2012, 26% in 2016, 26% in 2018, 28% in 2020, 24% in 2022, 23% in 2024. Thus, the precipitous drop to 17% in 2026 came as suddenly and sharply as a “Looney Tunes” character who overran a cliff.

One possible explanation for the drop is that evangelicals turned out in their usual numbers, but other demographics turned out more than usual. That explanation does not match the data. According to the University of Florida’s election lab, the 2026 election saw 123.5 million votes cast. That shows a slight increase over the 112.1 million votes of 2022 or the 120.3 million votes of 2018.

The vote total is still far less than the turnout in a presidential election year; there were 154.3 million votes cast in 2024, 158.5 million in 2020, and 136.8 million in 2016. (Plus, the raw number of eligible voters continues to increase over time. Thus, the raw number of votes cast in 2026 does not account for the precipitous drop in the evangelical turnout rate.)

The search for an alternate explanation leads us to calculate an estimate for exactly how many evangelicals voted. The table below takes the total votes cast from recent elections and multiplies it by the percentage of votes cast by evangelicals, according to exit polls, thus deriving the number of evangelical voters who participated in the election. The table then multiplies that number by the percentage of evangelicals who voted Republican, according to exit poll data, to calculate the number of evangelicals who voted Republican.

The results are instructive. According to these calculations, the number of evangelicals who voted reached a high in 2020, with 44.4 million casting a ballot and 33.7 million voting Republican. In 2024, the number of evangelicals who voted fell by 20.0% to 35.5 million, and the number voting Republican fell 13.7% to 29.1 million.

Both numbers then fell by 40.8% from 2024 to 2026, when only 21.0 million evangelicals voted, including 17.2 million who voted Republican. In total, the number of evangelicals who voted fell 52.7% from 2020 to 2026, and the number who voted Republican fell by 49.0%.

Of course, someone may reasonably argue that it is more appropriate to compare the 2026 turnout to other midterm years. If we do that, we find that evangelical turnout fell by 22% in 2026, compared to the 26.9 million who voted in 2022, and the number who voted Republican fell by 22.9% from 22.3 million in 2022. Evangelical turnout in 2022 had already fallen 14.0% from the 31.3 million who voted in 2018, and the number who voted Republican in 2022 declined a modest 4.8% from the 23.5 million who voted Republican in 2018.

This decline is significant because evangelical voting patterns were effectively consistent for the previous two decades. But, from 2020 to 2026, the number of evangelicals who voted fell by half! The national vote followed no such trend.

The natural follow-up question then becomes this: why did half as many evangelicals vote in 2026?

Did half the nation’s evangelicals abruptly change their religious identity? Other polls have detected no such seismic shift.

Did evangelicals suddenly become disillusioned with President Trump and decide to stay home in protest? Opinion polls do show that Trump’s approval rating among evangelicals fell from 78% in January 2025 to 58% in October 2026. But this was no outlier; the same polls show Trump’s approval rating falling by 15-20% among other religious categories as well.

Perhaps this loss in enthusiasm had a marginal impact on turnout, as evangelicals still supported Republicans by a four-to-one margin. But evangelicals often lack enthusiasm about their political options, and they still turn out to vote anyway — just like they did in 2008, 2012, and 2016, according to the data.

None of these factors would explain the sudden and sharp decline in evangelical turnout — and only evangelical turnout. Curiosity thus compels us onward to ask more questions. Is there, perhaps, some factor specific to evangelicals that has altered their relationship to the Republican Party since 2020, and especially since 2024?

Intellectual honesty forces us to admit that there is such a factor, although the answer is not one that most politicians will like. Since 2020, Republicans have profoundly altered their approach to abortion, which remains a top concern for many evangelical voters — especially the ones who vote Republican.

During the first Trump administration, evangelicals cheered while they watched Washington cut off federal funding for abortion left and right — from foreign aid, Obamacare, Title IX funding, Title X funding. Trump also appointed three solid justices to the Supreme Court, which evangelicals hoped (and not vainly) would ultimately result in the overturn of Roe v. Wade. As a result of his administration’s policy, relatively tepid evangelical support for Trump in 2016 turned into record-breaking support in 2020.

Then came the Dobbs decision in 2022, which broke up the judicial blockade of pro-life policies and raised the hopes of evangelicals that America would finally be able to protect life at the ballot box. Meanwhile, however, Donald Trump and moderate Republicans fled from the pro-life victory and apparently resolved to do nothing further about it. In the 2022 midterm elections, evangelical support for Republicans began to decline.

In 2024, the Republican National Convention, directed by the president, jettisoned strong pro-life language from the party platform in favor of bland platitudes. Many evangelicals supported Trump over the Democratic alternative and hoped to coax his second administration to return to the pro-life posture of his first administration. But evangelical turnout was now obviously ebbing.

The first two years of Trump’s administration have disappointed what hopes pro-lifers still nourished. Instead of the victory against Roe bringing down abortions, Biden-era policies allowed chemical abortion to illegally enter every state, subverting state laws and resulting in an increase in abortion. The Trump administration claimed to have the policy under review, but the evident lack of energy — in contrast to every issue the administration prioritized — led many evangelicals to conclude that the administration was stringing them along.

Congress was doing nothing to restrict abortion; the Trump administration was doing nothing to restrict abortion. And evangelicals felt as if they were simply expected to fall in line and vote for Republicans anyway, simply as a matter of course.

What were evangelicals supposed to do? The social issue of greatest import to them was not on the ballot. In this economy, they just couldn’t get excited about tariffs, immigration raids, triumphal arches, and prosecuting Trump’s enemies. They have families, social calendars, and bills to pay. And so, on Tuesday, voting for nothing in particular did not make it on their to-do list.

Is that the most rational or principled response to poor election options? Perhaps not. But it is an understandable one.

The evangelical absence from the 2026 midterms provides a powerful reminder of a lesson politicians too readily forget. Parties cannot take votes for granted; they must continue to earn them.

Originally published at The Washington Stand