The popular news site, Reuters, has a super interesting feature up right now. It’s an interactive “polling explorer” that shows the results of an on-going poll about the upcoming election. Respondents to the poll told Reuters their “selection for president, if the 2016 presidential election was between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.” Viewing the results, you can filter responses by several different demographic factors, like race, age, socioeconomic status, etc. When we isolated the results to include only those who identify as “born again Christians,” things got interesting.
The poll shows that 25 percent of these Christians say they will neither vote for Trump nor Clinton, and will vote for a third candidate or abstain from voting instead. What’s more, that percentage appears to be climbing: Those who chose “Other/Wouldn’t vote/Refuse” climbed 7 percent between May 3 to May 6 (the most recent available data) to 28.5 percent. Of course, we’ll have to watch this study during the next few weeks, but it’s starting to look like the angst among some Christian voters surrounding the 2016 election could end up being a major factor.
