Former Ohio Governor John Kasich, who ran for President in 2016, says he’s been told by a “very well respected” pollster that Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump has a “real problem” going into 2024.
Kasich, whose POTUS ambitions were ended by the upstart Trump nearly a decade ago, says he is being told that Christian Evangelicals — a key voting bloc in any future Trump victory — is having second thoughts about the former President, whom they overwhelmingly supported in his two previous elections.
Kasich says his sources reveal that Trump is losing critical support among Evangelicals specifically in Michigan — and the former Governor treats the information as a scoop, saying “I don’t know if this has been said on the air before.”
Fmr. Republican Gov. Kasich: Evangelicals are beginning to question their support for Trump. In Michigan, Trump is being hurt and trails Biden because the Evangelical community is saying 'enough is enough.' Without them, Trump has a real problem pic.twitter.com/ZTFZhCQq9f
— Biden-Harris HQ (@BidenHQ) February 20, 2024
“Evangelical voters are beginning to debate and question their support of Trump,” Kasich says. “I can tell you that in the state of Michigan, [Trump] is now being hurt and trails Biden because of the fact that the Evangelical community is saying ‘We don’t think this is our guy.'”
Kasich is predictably lampooned in the comments as less than an expert, especially since he was trounced by Trump when he ran. Kasich’s claims also seem to run contrary to Trump’s easy victory in the Iowa Caucuses, where white Evangelicals dominated the vote.
One argument that has been put forth elsewhere about Trump’s potentially losing Evangelical supporters has to do with, ironically, Trump’s success on their behalf.
Evangelicals who might otherwise have balked at a candidate with Trump’s background threw their support behind Trump based on promises that he would install a more conservative Supreme Court and end Roe v. Wade — abortion being perhaps the most critical issue of all for Evangelicals. Trump’s success in doing so may have rendered him less necessary.
In other words, Trump as an anti-abortion soldier was an attractive candidate. Now with that battle won, Evangelicals might be more willing to retire the soldier who helped them win it.
NPR reported this year after Iowa that “around 8 in 10 white evangelicals supported Trump in the general election in 2016 and a similar number again in 2020, when he lost to President Biden. Some defended those votes as a choice between Trump, who would advance goals like restricting abortion, and a Democrat, who would not.”
That article also asserts, contradicting Kasich, that “white evangelical Christians show no signs of backing away from Donald Trump.”
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