共和党需要福音派选民在中期选举中投票。宗教领袖们发出警告：他们可能不会到场

Republicans need evangelicals to turn out in the midterms. Faith leaders are sounding the alarm they may not

2026-10-13T09:00:45.386Z / CNN

Conservative leaders are sounding the alarm that more needs to be done in the final weeks before the midterm elections to educate and mobilize White evangelicals, a critical voting bloc in the president’s coalition. Republicans fear if they stay home, that could hand victories to Democrats in key races across the country with control of Congress at stake.

“I am not aware of any party machine that is at work right now to turn out evangelical voters,” one conservative evangelical pastor in Texas told CNN on the condition of anonymity to freely discuss the risks for Republicans in the election. “Maybe they are assuming they are going to show up, but that is a dangerous assumption.”

There’s little evidence national Republicans are doing much through their campaign committees to specifically target and mobilize the evangelical vote. Instead, grassroots mobilization is falling largely to individual churches and groups like the Faith and Freedom Coalition, which announced a get-out-the-vote operation aimed at turning out “drop-off voters” — evangelicals who vote in presidential elections but don’t always show up in the midterms.

At the same time, Democrats are mounting their own efforts to win over White Christian voters, making the argument that their party and priorities are aligned with faith-based values and recruiting candidates, including pastors, whose religion is a key part of their identity.

Turning out the White evangelical vote will be critical to Republicans’ success in key races across the South, from Texas to Georgia to Kansas and even places like South Carolina, where the late Sen. Lindsey Graham’s sister, Darline Graham, is facing off against Democrat Annie Andrews, who has mounted a more competitive campaign than Republicans expected.

In 2016, 2020 and 2024, roughly 8 in 10 White evangelicals cast ballots for President Donald Trump nationally. While they make up only 13% of the country’s population, they vote in such large numbers that they often account for roughly 20% of the electorate in any given election, according to the Public Religion Research Institute.

“The evangelical vote is Trump’s strongest coalition. Thirty-eight percent of his voters were White evangelicals.[Republicans] cannot win — I don’t care where you are in the country — without the evangelical vote,” said Ryan Burge, a professor at the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics at Washington University in St. Louis.

But at a moment when gas and grocery prices are high, the president’s approval rating is underwater, and enthusiasm among Republicans is tepid, the 2026 election could be a critical test of whether White evangelicals still have enough faith in the GOP to turn out in full force on Election Day.

“Evangelicals have to put gas in their cars just like everybody else. They gotta buy groceries just like everyone,” said North Carolina Rep. Mark Harris, a former pastor. “But I do think evangelical voters understand what is happening here.”

In recent weeks, national faith leaders like Southern Baptist Convention President Willy Rice have called on pastors to “step up” from the pulpit to educate their parishioners about what is at stake in the midterms. Several pastors told CNN they have mounted their own efforts to ensure parishioners and fellow pastors are mobilizing voters.

Rice told CNN in an interview that the economy is a challenge for evangelicals but that “we shouldn’t be thinking about the immediate stresses as much as we should be thinking about the underlying foundational issues; about what is right and wrong and what is true and untrue. It’s a big ask but we should make it.”

Chad Connelly, who once served as the national director of faith engagement at the Republican National Committee, has spent the last two months meeting with pastors in more than 20 states to educate them on how to discuss these issues from the pulpit.

And after more than 80 pastor meetings, he says more work still needs to be done.

“The evangelical turnout is really a difference maker,” Connelly said. “I don’t think the party has ever done enough in this realm.”

Ralph Reed, the founder and chairman of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, acknowledged that he has concerns, but insisted his organization is working hard to ensure evangelical voters who have skipped past midterm elections show up at the polls.

“Look, I’m paid to worry. You know, I worry as an occupational hazard and as a professional obligation,” he said. “We’re sailing into headwinds, and we all understand that, we all know the history of midterms for the party holding the White House. But you know, I’m confident that we will do our job and that we will deliver this vote, and we will deliver it in larger numbers than is typical for a midterm election.”

Reed admitted that the economy is one of those difficult headwinds.

“Man does not live by bread alone, but man needs bread to live,” he said. “So, whenever you’re dealing with issues of inflation, and, in this case, we believe very strongly, temporarily higher gas prices than we would like to see, and that the president would like to see, that impacts people in their daily lives, and sure, it has an impact.”

But some of the efforts are also just being left to individual pastors.

“A voter registration table sits at the lobby at our church,” said James Buntrock, the associate pastor at Glorious Way Church in Houston and the executive director of My God Votes.

The issue of turning out the evangelical vote has taken on major importance in Texas.

In a recent Sunday sermon, pastor Steve Riggle stood at the front of his church with a fact sheet and a stark warning for his congregants about Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico’s views on Christianity.

“This is not a political issue. It is not a Democrat issue or a Republican issue. This is a truth issue,” he warned. “A cunning deceiver does not come and make an announcement, ‘I am here to lead you away from God.’ What he will say is ‘Let me help you understand what God really means.’”

Voters are deciding between Talarico, a seminary student who has made faith a central component of his campaign but has often spoken in ways that evangelical leaders warn is counter to the Bible’s teachings, and Ken Paxton, the state attorney general whose wife divorced him on “biblical grounds” and who faced impeachment from his Republican colleagues in the Texas statehouse.

Laredo pastor Jorge Tovar told CNN that he is having conversations directly with his parishioners about the choice.

“As spiritual leaders we try to inform them and show them the facts,” he said.

Pressed on how he advises parishioners who may be conservative but have trepidation voting for Paxton, Tovar told CNN, “It’s just like President Trump as well. He has a past just like Attorney General Paxton, but when it comes to politics, people need to look at their policies and their platforms.”

The other Texas pastor whom CNN spoke to on the condition of anonymity told CNN they were walking a fine line on how they talk to parishioners about the Senate race.

“My calling in life is not to generate votes for Ken Paxton or anyone else,” they said.

Reed conceded that Texas would have likely been an easier seat for Republicans to hold if their candidate was incumbent Sen. John Cornyn. Paxton defeated Cornyn in a runoff shortly after securing the president’s endorsement.

“Everyone knew that if Ken Paxton was nominated that this was going to be a race within the margin of error, and it was going to be a barn burner,” Reed said. “Everybody knew that going in. … I think even had Cornyn won that primary this race would have been competitive. Would it have been this competitive? Probably not.”

Democrats have made a more aggressive play to recapture White Christian voters in recent months, seizing on rising prices and a social justice message to begin to make the argument that the GOP isn’t the only party aligned with Christian values.

Democrats are running candidates — such as Talarico in Texas, Methodist megachurch pastor Adam Hamilton in Kansas and ministers Sarah Trone Garriott and Lindsay James in Iowa congressional districts — they hope can start to close the so-called God gap in states where the Christian vote can make a big difference on Election Day.

Democrats believe they can make a play for Christian voters by broadening the discussion beyond debates over issues like abortion or LGBTQ rights, which they have been on the losing side of with White evangelical voters. Instead, Democrats’ message is more focused on “loving thy neighbor” and reflecting that as a central tenet of Christianity that supports their positions on reigning in immigration enforcement and pushing back on cuts to healthcare.

But conservative evangelical leaders aren’t ceding what has traditionally been a winning message for them just yet.

“I think the left’s words are mobilizing people far more than the conservative party is doing,” Connelly said. “They may have overplayed their hand in saying that I am one of you.”

Reed added, “I’m not concerned about it at all.”

On the trail, Republicans have attacked Democratic clergy candidates as “Pastors in Name Only.” Paxton often draws attention to Talarico’s past comments about his faith, including that he once said “God is nonbinary” and that Jesus was a “radical feminist,” as too extreme for many conservative churchgoers.

Talarico addressed the “nonbinary” comment on Fox earlier this year, saying, “I was being provocative with that statement. I get that. What I was trying to say is that you can’t use human categories to define God, and that’s not controversial theologically.”

In Kansas, Republican Sen. Roger Marshall has attacked Hamilton’s job as a megachurch pastor and accused him in one ad of using “faith to fatten his wallet.”

Hamilton campaign spokesperson Tyson Brody pushed back on the attacks, saying in a statement, “Adam is proud to have build a congregation of 24,000 split equally between Republicans, Democrats.”

“It’s shameful Roger Marshall has repeatedly lied about the largest congregation in the state he represents, directly smearing congregants who voted for him in past elections.”

But evangelical leaders and GOP opponents across the country are making different versions of the same argument that candidates like Talarico and Hamilton are twisting the Bible’s teachings to serve their own political purposes.

“I do think that people like James Talarico have used the Bible as a tool to help them get elected. The problem is they are reading from a different Bible then most people have ever heard of or seen,” said Jonathan Saenz, president of Texas Values.

Paxton campaign spokesman Madison Cercy echoed the sentiment in a statement to CNN. “Republicans across Texas are uniting behind the attorney general because they know the choice is between a proven fighter for their values and a radical who mocks those values,” she said.

Robert P. Jones, the president and founder of the Public Religion Research Institute, has done extensive research on White Christian voters. And while he believes evangelicals are likely to vote Republican if they show up to the polls on Election Day, he sees another warning sign for Republicans: White mainline Protestant voters.

“I don’t see any grand signs of evangelicals abandoning ship. If they have stuck with Trump this long through all the scandals, all the gaffes, all the policies, all the economic ups and downs, it is unclear to me what could possibly dislodge their support from him,” Jones told CNN. “But if you look at somewhere like Wisconsin or Michigan, where evangelicals are just 13% of the population and mainliners are 18% and White Catholics are 19%, then you are looking for a group who might sit it out or might switch their votes.”

In the last three presidential elections, roughly 6 out of 10 White mainline Protestant voters cast ballots for Trump, Jones said. But the group is seen as far more gettable for Democrats in part because it is more politically diverse.

“If I were a Republican strategist looking at the map, I would be worried about the other White Christians,” Jones said. “They are not as tethered to the president. In almost all the toss-ups I am looking at, even if Republicans gets their typical support from evangelicals, if they lose 10 points of support from the White mainline and White Catholic support, that could be decisive in all of these races.”