Who would religious Americans vote for if the election were held today?

Former President Donald Trump has long had strong support from evangelical voters, but that doesn’t mean he’s running away with the Christian vote in the 2024 election.
Two new national surveys show that some of the country’s largest faith groups actually express somewhat similar levels of support for Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris.
A Deseret News/HarrisX national poll found that, if the 2024 presidential election were held today, 51% of Christians would vote for Trump, while 41% would vote for Harris.
That gap does widen if you zoom in on responses from evangelical Protestants (68% for Trump vs. 30% for Harris), but Harris is a more popular choice among non-evangelical Protestants (37% for Trump vs. 55% for Harris).
Additionally, the HarrisX research showed that Catholics are split between the two candidates, with 46% saying they’d vote for Trump if the election were held today and 46% saying they’d vote for Harris.
The new HarrisX poll was fielded from Aug. 2-3 among 1,011 registered voters. The margin of error for the total sample is plus or minus 3.1 percentage points, and it’s higher when you break out individual faith groups.
A new Washington Post-ABC-Ipsos poll identified similar trends, showing that Trump outperforms Harris among white Christians but not among Black or Hispanic Christians.
Seventy-eight percent of white evangelical Protestants in that poll said they would vote for Trump and his running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, if the 2024 presidential election were held today, but that figure falls to 54% if you look at white mainline Protestants.
Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz are much more popular than Trump and Vance among Black Protestants (89% vs. 9%) and slightly more popular than them among Hispanic Catholics (50% vs. 47%), according to the survey.
The Post-ABC-Ipsos poll was conducted from Aug. 9-13 among 1,975 registered voters. The margin of error for the full sample is plus or minus 2.5 percentage points.
Trump grew up Presbyterian, which is one of many mainline Protestant denominations, but began identifying as a nondenominational Christian while in the White House, as the Deseret News previously reported.
However, multiple surveys have shown that Christian support for Trump doesn’t primarily stem from him being seen as devout.
Instead, he’s been embraced because he’s seen as a defender of faith, someone who will use his power to protect religious institutions.
Fewer polls have been done about the faith-related appeal of Harris, since she only became the Democratic nominee for president within the past month.
She identifies as a Baptist, but she grew up attending Hindu temples in addition to Christian churches and married a Jewish man, Douglas Emhoff, as an adult, as the Deseret News previously reported.