I wrote about this last night, but since I have a blog I get to say it again in a slightly different way. 🙂
Will Mark Galli’s Christianity Today editorial calling for Trump’s removal have any effect on the white conservative evangelical vote in 2020?
Yes.
While a large majority of white conservative evangelicals will stay true to Trump in the 2020 election, I have heard from a few evangelical folks who voted for Trump in 2016 and will not vote for Trump in 2016. They are telling me that Galli’s editorial reflects much of what they have been thinking about over the past year or two. It seems like Galli is giving folks yet another reason to think seriously about voting for someone other than Trump in 2020. Remember, many of the so-called 81% of Trump evangelical voters in 2016 pulled the lever for Trump because they hated Hillary Clinton. Some of these voters–many of them Christianity Today readers who supported other candidates during the 2016 GOP primary– will take Mark Galli seriously.
Why does this matter? Because the 2016 election was close. Trump lost the popular vote. The 2020 election will also be close. Any dip–even a small dip–in evangelical support could be one of the factors that swing the election. The Trump camp knows this. So do the court evangelicals. This is why they are spending so much time today tweeting about an evangelical magazine that they think is irrelevant.
They are awfully riled up about a publication they claim lost its relevance years ago.
— Thornos1 (@thornos1) December 20, 2019