Pro-Trump evangelicals plan massive voter turnout drive

If the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States in 2016 served as an apocalypse for Democrats, 2020 could be shaping up as a sequel of biblical proportions: a political Armageddon led by legions of conservative evangelicals determined to deliver a second term for the president.

My Faith Votes is an organization that convened an important meeting in 2016 aimed at coalescing pastors around then-candidate Trump. In the next few weeks, Just The News has learned, the group will be back at it, leading a massive church voter registration push across America to drive home the message that Christians have a moral obligation to vote. 

Their objective is at once simple and arduous: making sure tens of millions of evangelicals actually vote, even if they aren’t registered or haven’t voted in a long time. The re-election of Trump may depend on it. 

A new study conducted by the Knight Foundation showed that if nonvoters actually cast ballots, Trump would benefit more than the Democrat nominee in key battleground states like Arizona, Florida, Pennsylvania, and Virginia.

Earlier this month, the Faith and Freedom Coalition, led by influential evangelical leader Ralph Reed, announced that they will pour $50 million during the 2020 election cycle into a digital voter education campaign aimed at more than 20 million Christians. Target voters will be bombarded with emails, text messages, and a video highlighting pro-evangelical actions Trump has taken, like the U.S. Embassy move to Jerusalem, the protection of religious freedom, and the withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal, to name just a few. 

In addition, they have plans to put voter education literature in over 100,000 churches. With a solid Trump record to peddle this time around, Reed sees less skepticism and an easier lift motivating evangelicals to get to the polls. 

“A lot of voters were having to vote based on faith” in 2016, Reed told Just The News. “Now they're going to be able to vote based on both faith and sight. It's not much of a sales job at this point. It's just more of a get-out-the-vote job and a voter registration job.”

Evangelical organizers have their sights set on an expansive range of battleground states. The list includes: Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Missouri, Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona, Georgia, Iowa, Colorado, Minnesota, and North Carolina, where, for example, evangelical organizer David Lane and his group, the American Renewal Project, are working with top officials and pastors to mobilize the troops. 

Chad Connelly, the former National Director of Faith Engagement for the Republican National Committee, is now founder of the 501(c)3 organization Faith Wins. He’s met with more than 500 pastors in the last two months in an effort to get evangelical congregations to vote. 

The conservative, pro-family Family Research Council is always active come election time. This time will be no different, though they are keeping their plans close to the vest. 

“We are building upon our ground game of 2016 and expanding it to other key states,” said FRC President Tony Perkins. “We will leave no conservative stone unturned or church untouched in the effort to inform and engage Christian conservatives.”

As for the Trump campaign, on Jan. 3 they rolled out Evangelicals for Trump, a coalition intended to highlight a long list of wins Trump has delivered for conservative Christians, especially a steady succession of pro-life victories. 

Unlike 2016, this time around the Trump campaign apparatus and structure seem to be a well-oiled machine. Reed, who has seen plenty of political campaigns and operations up close over the decades, likes what he sees. 

“In terms of ground game, field operation, infrastructure, messaging, and the digital campaign, this is a state of the art effort, and I think it'll make a real difference,” said Reed.

Undeterred, a “Never Trump” Republican remnant hopes to either discourage or disparage the coming evangelical turnout for the president. A recent editorial published by Christianity Today called for President Trump’s removal from office. Meanwhile, the Lincoln Project, billed as an organization that protects democracy, released a critical video lampooning the president’s character while suggesting evangelicals who support him are engaging in biblical hypocrisy. 

In 2016, President Trump won 81% of the white conservative evangelical vote. That stands as a record for Republican presidents. This time around, however, with Democrats energized and chomping at the bit to remove this president at the ballot box, the key will be not so much Trump’s share of that vote, but rather the raw numbers, specifically evangelical voter participation totals. 

“Given what the left and the Democrats are getting ready to do,” Reed says, “given the amount of money that [George] Soros and [Mike] Bloomberg and others are going to spend, I think we're going to need to increase turnout in 2020 by as much or more over what we saw in 2016.” 

Whatever the outcome, this upcoming general election will no doubt have a distinct religious bent to it. After all, it was Trump himself who declared earlier this year in front of evangelicals, “I do really believe we have God on our side.” 

In 2020, he better hope enough evangelicals are on his side if he wants to see a second term.