A significant majority of white evangelical voters showed their support for Trump as the next president, according to the latest Pew Research Center study.
78 percent of white evangelical voters said they would vote for Trump if the elections were today, and 61 percent said they believe the controversial candidate understands their needs 'very' or 'fairly' well.
White evangelicals also showed their support for Trump's views on the majority of the social issues mentioned in the Pew survey, including gun policy (79 percent), defense against terrorism (78 percent), improving the economy (77 percent), trade policies (77 percent), immigration (75 percent), Supreme Court Justice decisions (74 percent), and managing the federal government (74 percent), to name a few. However, they were divided when it came to determining which candidate would be better at handling race relations, with 46 percent saying Trump would handle them better, and 44 percent saying the same for Clinton.
The study also shows that the degree of support is similar among white evangelicals who attend religious services regularly and those who don't as often. Some 75 percent of both groups said they would vote for Trump.
Many white evangelicals did also express their ambivalence about their feelings toward the two candidates. There were more white evangelicals who said they would vote for Trump mainly because of their opposition against Clinton (45 percent) than those who said they would vote for Trump because they support him as a candidate (30 percent).
42 percent of white evangelical voters said voting this year will be difficult, as neither Clinton nor Trump "would make a good president," in the words of the survey.
This dissatisfaction is similar to the dissatisfaction of voters in America overall, as 41 percent of Americans said they are dissatisfied with both candidates, which Pew Research says is the lowest rate of satisfaction since 1992.
