By Jason Jimenez
In less than a month, American voters will decide who the next president of the United States will be – which means Obama’s time in the White House is nearly up. After eight years of progressive policies, IRS intimidation, the enforcement of Obamacare, a $20 trillion national debt, the scandal in Benghazi, same-sex marriage, and the rise of ISIS – millions of Americans, especially evangelicals, have been counting down the days till Obama leaves office.
Well, that day is almost here, and yet, evangelicals aren’t as excited as hoped.
Why? Because the two options – Trump or Hillary – are not what they expected.
Though the primaries saw a huge number of evangelicals coming out enthusiastically for Carson, Cruz and Rubio, all those votes were spread out among too many like-minded conservative candidates, thus giving Trump an advantage and eventually the GOP nomination.
So the question now is: will evangelicals come out in full force and vote for Trump in November? Of course, we will have to wait and see, but I believe there’s enough evidence that sheds light on why I believe the evangelical vote won’t be the deciding factor for Trump in 2016.
For starters, evangelicals are still recovering from the fact that Cruz, Carson and/or Rubio didn’t make it to the end. Think about it. At one time, evangelicals had 16 other candidates to choose from on the Republican side. Yet, Trump wound up winning – leaving the evangelical base confused, divided and lacking real commitment to back him. Matter of fact, throughout this entire election, Trump’s polling numbers have remained unusually low among evangelicals. Even with the endorsements of Dr. James Dobson, Jerry Falwell Jr., Robert Jeffress and Tony Perkins, the Trump campaign has not seen a real promising boost of evangelical support. And with less than a month away, it would take a miracle for that to change.
Furthermore, rather than unify the evangelical base to unite under specific policy (and not a candidacy) – the NeverTrump movement has convinced many evangelicals not to vote at all. At this stage of the presidential race, the majority of churchgoing evangelicals believe that a vote for Trump is tantamount to endorsing his lifestyle – and that is something they will not do. The growing dissatisfaction evangelicals have for both candidates is something America hasn’t really seen in the last few presidential cycles, and its having a real effect on voters’ decisions about not to showing up at the polls this November.
Now, there is a force of evangelicals who are coming out to vote, and it’s not because they’re coming out to back Trump. Nope. The real reason they are coming out is to make sure the Clintons don’t get back into the White House. However, this NeverHillary movement of evangelicals is not going to be as strong as many people believe. Case in point: In 2012, there were millions of evangelicals who came out to vote, not because they supported Romney but because they didn’t want another four years of Obama. However, after all the votes were counted, Obama still won by 5 million votes. That may seem like a lot, but not when you factor in the tens of millions of evangelicals that didn’t even care to vote in 2012. The bottom line is, Romney received as many votes from evangelicals as Bush did in 2000 and in 2004 – and yet, Romney still loss.
So when you factor in the leaked videos containing “locker room” talk, the struggle to be contrite and stay on point, how confident is the Trump campaign that they will earn enough evangelical votes from blacks, Hispanics and millennials that will take him over the top Nov. 8?
We shall pray, and wait and see.
Jason Jimenez is a worldview expert, national speaker and author of “The Raging War of Ideas: How to Take Back Our Faith, Family, and Country,” “The Bible’s Answers to 100 of Life’s Biggest Questions” and “Stand Strong America: Courage, Freedom & Hope for Tomorrow.” For more information, check out www.standstrongministries.org.
