Three weeks to the midterms, and a quiet panic is growing inside the Republican war room. The problem is not Democrats. It is empty pews on Election Day.
Conservative leaders are sounding the alarm that White evangelicals — the most loyal bloc in President Donald Trump’s coalition — are not being mobilised, and if they stay home, Republicans could lose Congress.
“I am not aware of any party machine that is at work right now to turn out evangelical voters,” a prominent conservative evangelical pastor in Texas told CNN on condition of anonymity. “Maybe they are assuming they are going to show up, but that is a dangerous assumption.”
That assumption has powered Republican wins for a decade. In 2016, 2020 and 2024, roughly 8 in 10 White evangelicals voted for Trump. While they are just 13% of the U.S. population, they make up nearly 20% of the actual electorate in any given election because they vote at such high rates, 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, professor at the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics at Washington University. But 2026 is not 2024.
The Enthusiasm Gap
Gas and grocery prices are high. President Trump’s approval rating is underwater. Republican enthusiasm is tepid. And unlike presidential years, midterm years are notorious for evangelical drop-off — voters who show up for Trump but skip the midterms.
There is little evidence the national GOP campaign committees are running a targeted evangelical turnout operation. The work has largely fallen to individual churches and grassroots groups like Ralph Reed’s Faith and Freedom Coalition, which announced a major get-out-the-vote push focused on those exact “drop-off voters.”
Meanwhile, Democrats are not sitting idle. The party is actively recruiting candidates whose faith is central to their identity — including pastors — and making a direct pitch that its priorities on healthcare, poverty, and economic justice align with Christian values.
The battle will be felt across the South. In Texas, Georgia, Kansas, and even South Carolina — where Darline Graham, sister of the late Sen. Lindsey Graham, is facing a surprisingly competitive challenge from Democrat Annie Andrews — White evangelical turnout will decide control.
North Carolina Rep. Mark Harris, himself a former pastor, admitted the pressure.“Evangelicals have to put gas in their cars just like everybody else. They gotta buy groceries just like everyone,” Harris said. “But I do think evangelical voters understand what is happening here.”
Is This Backsliding Or Wisdom?
To ask if evangelicals are turning their back on Trump is to ask the wrong question. Evangelicals never belonged to Trump. They belonged to a set of convictions — life, religious liberty, family, Israel — that Trump happened to champion more aggressively than any Republican since Reagan.
When those convictions are clearly on the ballot, evangelicals show up. When the election becomes about personality, tariffs, or the economy alone, many stay home — not out of rebellion, but out of weariness.
That is not turning their back. That is a warning. The Church is not the ground game of the GOP. And when the party machine assumes the pews will automatically fill the voting booths without pastoring them, discipling them, or speaking their moral language, it loses them.
Democrats have learned this. That is why they are now putting pastors on their tickets. Faithful people do not turn out for partisanship. They turn out for purpose.
Written with reports from CNN
