Florida evangelicals mull Trump vs. DeSantis and, #behold, AP finds some diversity!

Brace yourselves, readers, because I am about to praise an Associated Press story about evangelical voters, Florida and the looming clash between Gov. Ron DeSantis and former President Donald Trump.

But before we go there, let’s review two GetReligion themes about these topics.

(1) During the primaries before the 2016 presidential election, a strong army of evangelical voters provided strategic support for Trump. But just as many evangelicals voted for other GOP candidates in a very, very large Republican field. In the general election, white evangelicals — faced with a choice between Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton — voted overwhelmingly for Trump.

This created the “81% of evangelicals just love Trump” myth, which hid some crucial divisions inside the complex and diverse world of American evangelicalism.

(2) Trump reached the White House — quite literally — because of the crucial votes of Latino evangelicals and Pentecostal believers in Florida. The growing diversity in Latino voting remained a secret hidden in clear sight until press coverage linked to the 2020 and 2022 elections, including the rise of DeSantis, who is Catholic.

This brings us to the new AP report: “Trump vs. DeSantis: Florida pastors mull conservative issues.”

While it contains some familiar mainstream press language on moral and cultural issues — battles about parental rights and sex education are about “politics,” as opposed to beliefs or doctrines — it offers information and input from a strong set of insiders and experts. Also, there is a truly shocking summary statement about evangelicals in Florida. Hold that thought. Here is the overture:

DORAL, Florida (AP) — Several of Florida’s conservative faith leaders have the ear of two early frontrunners for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination — former President Donald Trump, who lives in Palm Beach, and Gov. Ron DeSantis.
The clergy’s top political priorities are thus likely to resonate in the national campaign for the religious vote, even as both men’s agendas are still being weighed from the pulpit.
The faith leaders’ key issues include education, especially about gender and sexuality, and immigration, a particularly relevant matter in Florida, which is a destination for hundreds of thousands of newcomers and home to politically powerful Latino diasporas.

Guess what? Latino clergy have a rather complex stance on immigration, one rather similar to the views I have heard from mainstream evangelicals for a long time.

Thinking with Ryan Burge (and one of his critics) about abortion and evangelical voting

If you follow political scientist Ryan Burge on Twitter (which you should do, of course), then you know that he sends out waves of poll information, creatively sifted, in the form of charts.

From time to time, people have been known to bounce questions back to him, seeking clarification or more specific numbers on some strange angle of the topic at hand. I confess that I have been known to do that.

Burge is relentlessly helpful in that online setting. However — imagine this — there are people who argue with him? On Twitter, of all places! Some disagree with his interpretations. On Twitter!

I’m being sarcastic, to make a point linked to this weekend’s pair of “think pieces.” I’m one of those guys who disagrees with Burge from time to time. That happens, when someone is delivering and then interpretting lots of information in a public forum. The difference with Burge is that he is relentlessly candid, even when dealing with numbers and trends that challenge lots of common news templates.

Recently, Burge wrote a commentary piece — backed with some of his charts — for Religion News Service, flashing back to some polling from 2018. The piece ran with this double-decker headline:

Abortion just isn’t the motivating issue for evangelicals it once was
Studies show white evangelicals, by and large, do not have a hard-line approach to abortion — other issues like immigration and race are taking priority over advocating for the unborn.

Whatever your stance on “life” issues, don’t you want to read more about that claim? Here is a key (and quite long) section of that: