Most Americans don’t see either of this year’s presidential candidates as particularly religious or Christian.
In a new survey by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs, 64 percent of adults said they don’t consider former president Donald Trump religious and 53 percent said they don’t consider Kamala Harris religious. A majority also agreed that they wouldn’t describe either as “Christian.”
A plurality of Americans—41 percent—say neither Trump nor Harris represents their religious views.
Despite both candidates identifying as Christian, Trump and Harris have only glancingly discussed their own faith on the campaign trail. The topic didn’t come up at all during the recent presidential debate, which may fuel perceptions of their religiosity—or lack thereof.
A majority of white evangelicals have backed Trump for the past three presidential races, yet few associate him with their faith.
Among white evangelicals, only around 2 in 10 say the word Christian describes Trump “extremely or very well,” the survey found. Trump was raised mainline Presbyterian and later came to identify as nondenominational. During his time at the White House, he made a point to surround himself with evangelical faith advisers.
There are stark divides between white and Black Christians on perceptions of the candidates.
A majority of Black Protestants believe Harris best represents their religious views; however, only around 4 in 10 say the descriptor “Christian” describes Harris very or extremely well.
Harris belongs to a historically Black Protestant church in San Francisco, and her longtime pastor was among the first people she called when she decided to make her bid for the Democratic Party’s nomination. Her husband is Jewish, and she also grew up in an interfaith family, attending both Hindu temples and a Black Baptist church.
Conversely, half of white evangelicals say Trump represents their religious beliefs or views better than Harris.
Voters were also reluctant to ascribe terms like honest and moral to either candidate. About a third of respondents said descriptors like “honest” or “moral” fit Harris extremely or very well, and only 15 percent described Trump as honest or moral.
Hispanic Protestants were largely split in the survey. A slight majority did not think the words Christian or religious described Trump. About half of Hispanic Protestants described Harris as Christian, and less than half described her as religious.
Samuel Rodriguez, a pastor and president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, told Axios that this presidential election is the first he remembers where faith hasn’t been a key emphasis in a candidate's stories. “You usually hear a faith component. But take the debate … God wasn’t mentioned once,” he said.
Earlier this month, the Trump campaign announced it had brought on Ben Carson, former Housing and Urban Development Secretary, as its National Faith Chairman. Carson is Seventh-day Adventist.
“There is only one candidate in this race that has defended religious liberty and supported Americans of faith. That candidate is Donald J. Trump,” Carson said in the announcement of his hiring statement.
Though Trump rarely speaks about a personal faith, he has invoked God at times when talking about the attempted assassinations. In one interview after the shooting at a rally in Pennsylvania saying he had been spared “by luck or by God.” Another post on his social media platform thanked supporters for their “thoughts and prayers” and added that “it was God alone who prevented the unthinkable from happening.”
In August, the Harris campaign hired Jennifer Butler, a progressive Presbyterian minister and founder of the nonprofit Faith in Public Life, to be national faith engagement director. Butler has been in touch with a grassroots group, Evangelicals for Harris, that also formed this summer to boost turnout among Christians for Harris.
“We want to turn out our base, and we think we have some real potential here to reach folks who have voted Republican in the past,” she told the Associated Press.
At her Democratic convention speech, Harris touched on faith as a value passed on from her family and other adults, including her downstairs neighbor. She’s previously spoken about the importance of that same neighbor, Regina Shelton, who often took Harris on Sunday mornings to church.
Pew Research Center found in a survey released this month that majorities of white evangelicals, white Catholics, and white mainline Protestants support Trump. Harris, meanwhile, has two-thirds or more support among Black Protestants, Hispanic Catholics, and Jewish voters.
