Faith & Freedom Coalition
November 9, 2016

Record Turnout of Voters of Faith Fueled Trump Triumph

Evangelicals, Faith-based Voters Surged to One out of Every Three Voters, Backed Trump and GOP Candidates by Historic Margins

(Washington, DC) – Led by record turnout of evangelicals, voters of faith provided the margin of victory on an historic night for President-elect Donald J. Trump and down-the ballot Republican Senate and House candidates, according to network exit polls and a post-election survey conducted by Faith & Freedom Coalition.

Self-identified evangelicals comprised a record 26% of the electorate and voted 81% for Trump, with only 16% voting for Hillary Clinton. This was the lowest share of the self-identified white evangelical vote ever received by a Democratic presidential nominee.

The post-election survey commissioned by FFC and conducted by Public Opinion Strategies also found that 33% of the electorate self-identified as conservative Christians, and these voters cast 79% of their ballots for Trump and only 15% for Clinton. This was the highest share of the electorate made up of conservative Christians in a presidential election in the modern era.

Faithful, pro-life Roman Catholics voters contributed mightily to the faith vote. White Catholics, one out of every six voters, voted 54% for Trump and 36% for Clinton, swinging Rust belt states like Ohio, Iowa, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin to the GOP column.

A number of state exit polls showed astonishing margins for Trump among evangelicals. In Florida, Trump won self-identified evangelicals 85% to 13% for Clinton. In Georgia, evangelicals voted 88% for Trump to 6% for Clinton. In Wisconsin the evangelical vote broke 71% for Trump to 24% for Clinton.

“Voters of faith turned out in record numbers and gave Donald Trump a margin of support that provided an indispensable key to his victory,” said Tim Head, executive director of Faith & Freedom Coalition. “At a time when some were writing the political obituary of the conservative religious vote, it showed its effectiveness yet again. Republicans cannot win without it, and Democrats would be wise to find a way to appeal to these voters of faith.”

Faith & Freedom undertook a data-analytics-driven $10 million grassroots “ground game” campaign to educate, mobilize and turn out voters of faith. Its volunteers knocked on 1.2 million doors of social conservative voters in key states, made over 10 million phone calls, sent 22 million pieces of educational mail, and passed out 30 million voters guides in 117,000 churches.

The campaign centered on 15.6 million faith-based voters in the key states that FFC’s data analytics and micro-targeting found were regular churchgoers, held to a strong faith commitment, and were pro-life, pro-Israel and anti-Obamacare.