This year, 81-year-old Lowrie Beacham is ending his lifelong streak of voting Republican.
“I have an unbroken record … although it’s about to be broken,” Beacham said. “I’m planning to vote for Kamala Harris, heaven help me.”
Eight years ago, Beacham served as a Republican poll worker in Orange County, North Carolina. In 2016 and in 2020, he cast his vote for Donald Trump. January 6, 2021, was the day things changed.
He and his wife watched Fox News for six hours as the Capitol was overrun with disgruntled Trump supporters. “I cannot tell you how appalled we were,” he said. “We were hoping that the next day the Congress would impeach him and convict him.”
Instead, he watched national Republican figures, like South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham, make peace with Trump. “That’s when I said, ‘That’s it, we’re leaving.’” By January 12, the Beachams had changed their party affiliation to register as Independent.
Even though he has misgivings about Harris and disagrees with the Democratic Party’s policies, Beacham decided to vote for Harris to defeat Trump. He hopes the party will one day return to one he can support. “I didn’t leave the Republican Party,” he said. “The Republican Party left me.”
Swing voters are a minority, especially among today’s hyperpolarized and partisan electorate. Most Americans make up their minds well before November, typically falling in line with their party affiliations.
The majority of white evangelicals have remained a reliable Republican voting bloc. Lifeway Research found in September that Trump’s support was at 61 percent among likely voters with evangelical beliefs, compared to 31 percent for Harris. Only 8 percent were undecided or supporting another candidate.
Election watchers are paying more attention to voters like Beacham, whose decisions around who to vote for or whether to vote are underscored by ambivalence, frustration, and concern. These are feelings that evangelicals across the political spectrum have grappled with for years.
In Time magazine, electoral psychologists Michael Bruter and Sarah Harrison recently wrote,
In many ways, next week’s decision will not be made by hardcore supporters for either camp but rather by the many citizens across the U.S. who have become largely disillusioned—sometimes hopeless about democracy and society and will use their ballot to express a wide range of fears and frustrations. Much of this will have nothing to do with whether they like Republicans or Democrats better, or the public policy they would prefer for the country. More and more, people want to use democracy to claim that the system is not working or feel respected and listened to by political elites than to influence policy or seek representation.
That includes Christians who have reconsidered their political approach during the Trump years. These evangelicals align with some of the common traits that researchers identified among persuadable voters: They considered themselves politically moderate, did not particularly like either candidate, and were mostly disengaged from political news.
Caleb Martin, a Presbyterian in his 30s, falls into that camp. Though he’s a Republican, he has opted to write in a candidate in the past two presidential elections rather than cast a vote for Trump.
His reluctance to support the former president, he said, “really boiled down to character.” Trump’s previous divorces and history of making vulgar statements were turnoffs.
“The way he would speak to people, the way he would treat his opponents verbally … I don’t feel excited or proud to have this person represent our country on the world front, even though I mostly align with his policies,” said Martin, who lives in Illinois.
But after Joe Biden’s presidency, Martin is worried that another Democratic administration would raise taxes and extend abortion rights. Now, he’s “ready to focus more on policy than character.”
He’s voting for Trump for the first time.
“I’m at the point where I’m like, I just don’t want to see another version of these last four years,” he said. “There are still policies that Trump is saying he supports that are generally Republican policies that I still agree with.”
Evangelical voters and regular churchgoers are less likely than other voters to see a presidential candidate’s “personal character” as a deciding factor, according to Lifeway Research. Fewer than half name it as a priority, instead ranking issues like the economy, immigration, and religious freedom as top considerations.
The majority of Harris supporters say character and position on abortion are their top issues. Only 6 percent of evangelical voters rank abortion as their No. 1 factor in selecting a candidate. Pro-life voters have opposed the GOP’s shift on abortion and even Trump’s stance to leave the issue to the states, but they still plan to vote Republican because they find the Democratic platform on abortion even more unpalatable.
“Crucially, not all citizens see their role as voters in the same way. … We find that some voters see themselves as ‘supporters’ who will likely vote for their ‘camp’ whatever may be,” wrote Bruter and Harrison, “but others see themselves as ‘referees’ who will assess the worth of the candidates and their programs, and try to pick whoever they think would be best for the country.”
Grace Miller, a retiree in Georgia, voted for Trump in 2016 and Biden in 2020, but she’s not sold on Trump or Harris this time.
In 2016, Miller didn’t know much about Trump but was convinced by arguments that he was a successful businessman and would manage the country well.
In 2020, Miller became convinced that Trump did not respect the Constitution and opposed his efforts to overturn election results in Georgia. “Also, his claim to be a Christian or using the name of God began to seem more and more to me as a deception,” she said.
In a poll this year, most Americans said they didn’t see Trump or Harris as particularly Christian and didn’t describe either presidential candidate as “honest” or “moral.”
Miller wasn’t happy with her vote for Biden and doesn’t see Harris as an improvement. “I’m just horrified by some of the policies and principles that Harris represents and stands up for,” she said. “I just think Republicans and Democrats are two sides of the same coin, and that coin is not of God.”
“I don’t want to abstain from voting. … I feel a responsibility to vote in a way that pleases and honors God and brings Jesus to my fellow citizens,” she said. “I have no idea what that is. I’m just praying earnestly, and so far, I haven’t gotten a clear answer.”
A YouGov poll in February found that 85 percent of registered voters had already definitively decided who they would vote for or had enough of a commitment to a candidate that they didn’t think they would change.
Vocal supporters on both sides can be frustrated by undecided voters when they think their candidate is the obvious choice.
Trump supporters assume if Miller won’t vote for Trump that means she’s voting for the Democratic candidate, so they ask how she can be a Christian and vote for Harris. Other fellow Christians discourage her from voting third party, saying any vote not for Trump or Harris is a waste.
Poll numbers might not be able to capture all the voters who change their minds last-minute on who to vote for or whether to vote at all, according to Bruter and Harrison, authors of Inside the Mind of a Voter. “At times, it may be hard to realize the prevalence of individual change because a lot of voters will cancel each other out,” they wrote.
Miller has largely stopped talking to others about her decision. Instead, she talks to God about it.
“I’m not just totally sitting here with my hands folded, waiting for God to tell me. I do my homework. I do my research. I’m digging into the different parties and their platforms, I’m digging into both Harris and Trump,” she said. “I’m using my reason, which God gave me, but I’m still going to rely on him.”
