Conservative says 'narrowing' divide spells doom for GOP in major red state

President Donald Trump speaks during a press briefing at the White House, on the one-year mark into his second term in office, in Washington, D.C., January 20, 2026. REUTERS Nathan Howard

President Donald Trump relied on the support of white evangelical voters to win both of his presidential elections, in 2016 and 2024 — but a conservative writer argued on Sunday that he and his fellow Republicans may be gradually losing these same religious voters.

After describing the surprising strength of Democratic nominee James Talarico compared to Republican candidate Ken Paxton in the Texas Senate election, The New York Times' David French wrote that "to understand the religious dynamics of the Texas race, it’s important to absorb the true depths of the “God gap” in American politics. That gap isn’t just about white evangelicals (although it certainly is partly about them), and it’s one of the Democrats’ chief obstacles to obtaining a durable political majority."

French continued, "Any discussion of the God gap does have to begin with white evangelicals. Their numbers are vast (far more than twice as large as Black Protestants, the most loyal religious Democratic voters), and they vote in lock step. In 2024, white evangelicals voted for Trump by a 65-point margin, 82 percent to 17 percent. Trump lost all other voters by 18 points, 58 percent to 40 percent."

Although religious groups voted more heavily Republican in 2024 than in previous elections, French speculated that this may have had less to do with a permanent shift in party allegiances than in the possibility that "people of faith may not be lost to Democrats forever so much as they’re punishing Democrats — warning with their votes against the secularization and social radicalization of the far left." To support this hypothesis, he noted that President Joe Biden outperformed Vice President Kamala Harris considerably among these groups between 2020 and 2024.

French is not alone in noting that the Christian right is losing political clout and that religious voters may swing toward the Democrats. Last month, The Bulwark's Joe Perticone wrote that, ever since national abortion rights were overturned in the 2022 Supreme Court decision Dobbs v. Jackson, Christian right organizations that relied on the abortion issue to galvanize voters have been struggling instead.

"One of the major subplots in American politics over the past half-decade is evangelical Christians—the political constituency without which Trump would have never been elected president—becoming the dog that caught the car," Perticone explained. "They just haven’t had much reason to go to the polls since June 2022, when the Supreme Court overturned the legal right to an abortion in its landmark Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision."

Trump's behavior has also turned off some Christian voters. For example, John Whitehead – founder of the powerful Christian legal movement – has argued that the movement has “gone astray" in the Trump era.

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