Donald Trump is more popular than ever with white evangelicals

Allegations of a dalliance with a porn star do not deter the president’s most faithful supporters even slightly

IN CASE anyone should think American white evangelicals are actually in favour of extra-marital affairs with porn stars, Robert Jeffress, a well-known pastor from Texas, offered a helpful explainer last month. “Evangelicals still believe in the commandment, Thou shall not have sex with a porn star”, he told Fox News. “However, whether this president violated that commandment or not is totally irrelevant to our support of him.”

It was useful to have this cleared this up. Since Stephanie Clifford, a porn star who is also known as Stormy Daniels, alleged that she had had a sexual tryst with Donald Trump only months after his third wife gave birth, the president appears to have become even more popular among white evangelicals than he was before. A survey by Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), published this week, suggests support among white evangelicals for Mr Trump is, at 75%, at the highest level ever recorded.

That is much higher than the president’s 42% approval rating among the general population. It is also represents a fairly steady recent increase in white evangelicals’ support for Mr Trump. Less than half backed him during the Republican primaries, in 2016. But since Mr Trump became president their support has not dropped below 65%. Robert Jones, chief executive of PRRI, said that fits a familiar established pattern: evangelicals tend to cluster behind whoever emerges as the Republican candidate in a given race—and cluster even more forcefully when that candidate wins office.

But it seems remarkable that white evangelicals could be so unfazed by Mr Trump’s latest scandals. Last month, Ms Clifford filed a lawsuit against the president in an effort to be free of a hush agreement she had signed with his attorney. Also last month, a former Playboy model called Karen McDougal gave a television interview in which she described an alleged 10-month-long affair with Mr Trump in 2006 (which was also the year of his alleged tryst with Ms Clifford). Ms McDougal claimed that the president had offered her money after their first sexual encounter and that she ended the affair because she became consumed with guilt about his adultery. The White House has denied that Mr Trump had the alleged affairs.

Perverse though it seems, it is no coincidence that the president’s popularity with white evangelicals has increased amid these scandals. White evangelicals are a fading force in American politics and society and Mr Trump has cast himself as their defender. So when he comes under attack, they consider themselves to be under attack too.

A PRRI survey conducted last year found the proportion of Americans who are white evangelicals had fallen to 17%, from 23% in 2006. The intervening years featured another development, the introduction of gay marriage, which for many conservative Christians is both emblematic of their decline and exceptionally aggravating. Mr Trump has signalled his sympathy for such cultural fears by vowing to exclude transgender people from the armed forces. He has also aligned himself firmly with the pro-life movement, including by addressing an annual anti-abortion march in Washington and appointing conservative judges. The aggressive manner in which he has claimed to be leading a counter-cultural pushback seems to go down with white evangelicals especially well. “Trump is like the boy who punches the bully in the playground”, says Mr Jones. “They like that”.

A longstanding idea that white evangelicals are most concerned about the moral character of their leader has, in the process, gone out the window. In a recent interview with Politico Tony Perkins, the president of the Family Research Council, an influential Christian campaign group, said Mr Trump’s relationship with evangelicals was “transactional”. He suggested evangelicals had got much out of the deal, with Mr Trump delivering more on policy, “than any other president in my lifetime.”

This is a big reason why Mr Trump’s approval ratings have stayed remarkably steady, despite the many scandals buffeting his administration. Evangelicals are one of the biggest segments of his coalition and they are going nowhere. The PRRI survey also found that 69% of white evangelical Protestants who identify with or lean towards the Republican Party would prefer Donald Trump over any other candidate to be the party’s presidential nominee in 2020.