After courting evangelicals throughout his campaign and claiming God spared him from an assassin’s bullet to be president again, Donald Trump has won reelection.
Trump defeated Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday night, edging out the Democratic contender in key swing states including Pennsylvania, Georgia, and North Carolina as much of the country shifted to the right.
Trump took the stage with his family and campaign team in West Palm Beach, Florida, and gave a victory speech around 2:30 a.m.
“Many people have told me that God saved my life for a reason,” the former president said. “The reason was to save our country and to restore America to greatness. And now we are going to fulfill that mission.”
Earlier, at a watch party in Arlington County, Virginia, dozens of Republicans cheered each time another state was called for Trump. Even after a close race, the Trump supporters felt the momentum swinging their way.
“People have experienced four years of Biden-Harris, and they’ve seen the economic negative that has occurred, and they’re going to be eager for a change,” said Harry Moedinger, the faith outreach director for the Arlington GOP.
An exit poll by The Washington Post indicated 81 percent of white evangelical voters once again backed Trump, though fewer voters identified as “evangelical”—22 percent this year compared with 28 percent in 2020.
With President Joe Biden, a lifelong Catholic, out of the running, Trump also gained ground with Catholic voters. They backed the Republican candidate over Harris by a double-digit margin.
Many evangelicals, similar to Republican voters overall, ranked the economy and immigration as their primary issues in this election.
According to Mark Caleb Smith, director of the Center for Political Studies at Cedarville University, Trump’s victory could indicate that “economics swamped other social and cultural factors,” such as abortion, which was a key mobilizer in the Democratic campaign.
With the crowd chanting, “USA! USA!” at his event Tuesday night, Trump called the campaign “the greatest political movement of all time,” while Vice President–elect JD Vance said they would herald the country’s “greatest economic comeback.”
“We are going to help our country heal,” Trump said. “It’s time to put our divisions behind us and unite.” Trump concluded his 25-minute remarks by saying, “God bless you, and God bless America.”
Though the businessman-turned-politician faced skepticism from some evangelicals in his first term, Trump went on to gain their loyalty by prioritizing religious freedom and the appointment of conservative justices to overturn Roe v. Wade.
A minority of conservative evangelicals continued to reject Trump’s candidacy due to concerns around his character, tone, and rejection of the 2020 election results.
Some “Never Trump” evangelicals shifted to third-party or write-in candidates, and some aligned with the Democratic candidate under Evangelicals for Harris.
On Tuesday night, the group posted on social media that it was grateful for its supporters. “And just to be clear, we won’t be going away,” the account added.
While Trump’s moderating stance on abortion disappointed committed pro-lifers, he promised religious voters they would have a seat at the table of a second Trump administration. He also appointed Ben Carson, a Seventh-day Adventist surgeon and 2016 presidential aspirant, to head the campaign’s faith outreach.
The campaign also had plenty of reinforcement from conservative religious groups. Evangelical supporters like Ralph Reed’s Faith and Freedom Coalition, the American Family Association, My Faith Votes, and the National Faith Advisory Board mobilized voters in swing states. Lance Wallnau, a leading figure in the New Apostolic Reformation who prophesied Trump’s election, has also held revival-laced political events.
While election turnout was lower among Black and Hispanic voters, Republicans saw their numbers improve among Hispanics. Harris’s margins with Hispanics in swing states were narrower than Biden’s, and Hispanic voters who were concerned about the economy favored Trump by a 2-to-1 margin. Hispanic Christians told CT earlier in 2024 that during the Trump years, Republicans did more to earn their support.
Trump won the key battleground state of Pennsylvania, where he’d survived an attempted assassination, spurring ardent supporters to see the narrow miss as divine intervention and to pray for his protection on the campaign trail. Vance said, “I truly believe God saved President Trump’s life that day.”
Trump returned to the shooting site a few weeks ago amid the enthusiastic welcome of thousands of supporters, including young, first-time voters, like a pair of Grove City College students in Trump T-shirts. (One shirt read, “The Founding Fathers were Felons Too.”)
“It’s too early to know the particulars, but it seems like Trump’s appeal to men, especially disaffected young men, may have been successful,” Smith said.
As both the 45th and future 47th president of the United States, Donald Trump will be only the second president to serve nonconsecutive terms since Democrat Grover Cleveland in the 1800s.
While there still are returns outstanding, Republicans won the Senate thanks to pickups in West Virginia, Ohio, and Nebraska. Democrats previously held a 51–49 majority, but Republican incumbents and challengers benefitted from a strong showing at the top of the ticket to reverse the majority. It’s unclear which party will win control of the House of Representatives, and it could take days to tabulate final results.
Moedinger in Arlington prayed for Trump to win, but he’s also prayed that God would change the former president’s heart, noting that Trump has said in the past he isn’t someone “who needs to ask God for forgiveness.”
“Whatever comes to pass, God works it for the good,” Moedinger said. “Preserving his life and having a plan for his second administration, I think that’s possible.”
