With the 2024 US Presidential election fast approaching, many are left wondering how 74 million people (around 47% of the US voting population) could vote for Donald Trump in 2020? How did he win the presidency in 2016? To understand these questions, we need to first address a deeper one: why has the Republican party largely embraced, with minimal pushback, a shift to populism—the cornerstone of Trump’s campaigns and presidency between 2016 and 2020?
Historically, the Republican Party has stood for traditional values like limited government, individual freedom, strong national defense, American leadership on the global stage, low taxes, and support for capitalism (including free trade). These principles guided Republican presidential nominees as recently as 3 election cycles ago. Trump’s platform, and his supporters’ priorities, are markedly different.
At the forefront of their agenda is dismantling the so-called “deep state”—a perceived coalition of government officials pushing their own agenda—and ensuring “fair” elections, based on Trump’s baseless claim that the 2020 election was stolen. Additionally, Trump and his supporters advocate for punishing schools who teach critical race and gender studies, promoting an isolationist foreign policy (through tariffs and challenging NATO), cutting taxes, and creating jobs by reverting to the use of traditional energy sources. They also emphasize curbing illegal immigration and upholding traditional social values, such as leaving decisions on abortion and gay marriage to the states or restricting transgender athletes in sports. In short, this platform combines elements of populism, conspiracy theories, and religious conservatism. Most of the Republican Party is on board. Those who aren’t have been marginalized, mocked, and even threatened to be hung.
While the modern Democratic Party has consistently relied on the support of educated, urban, minority, and female voters, Republicans have historically struggled to secure similar, long-lasting support from specific voter groups. In recent years, however, they’ve managed to gain substantial backing from evangelicals and those who subscribe to conspiracy theories. Evangelicals are a broad, non-catholic, religious category that encompasses those who share four theological distinctions: taking the bible literally and feeling called to spread the message, believing Jesus is the only way to be saved, and that one must be saved in a single “born again” moment. These four core beliefs also distinguish Evangelicals from “mainline protestants”. A striking 33% of the Republican vote in the last four elections have come from evangelicals.
This evangelical support is crucial for the Republican Party and dangerous to lose, which helps explain why the party has largely embraced the shift to Trumpism. But how did the Republican Party manage to build this coalition in the first place? To find the answer, we need to go back to the 1970s.
Paul Weyrich—a conservative and religious activist— saw the potential of merging religious and conservative forces. He wrote that the “moral majority will have the opportunity to re-create this great nation” if, and only if, “political power is achieved.” How could Weyrich galvanize evangelicals, who historically had been more disengaged from national politics? Surprisingly, it wasn’t abortion that initially brought them into the fold. Evangelicals at the time often considered abortion a “catholic” issue. Some pastors even praised the Roe v. Wade. decision.
The true catalyst for evangelical political engagement was desegregation. Many evangelicals ran Christian schools and universities that resisted admitting Black students. When a 1971 Supreme Court Ruling stated that segregated schools would no longer be entitled to tax exemptions, it sparked outrage among many religious leaders. Weyrich seized on this anger, framing the issue as a matter of religious freedom rather than racial segregation. This helped rally even more evangelical support. By the late 1970s, with abortion becoming an increasingly contentious issue, Weyrich and other conservative leaders were able to mobilize the broader religious public through graphic, emotional campaigns about the rise of abortion rates, further solidifying the evangelical-conservative alliance.
In 1980, this alliance helped propel Ronald Reagan to victory. Paul Weyrich’s efforts didn’t stop there. He also founded influential conservative organizations like the Heritage Foundation (the institute that infamously put out Project 2025) and the Council for National Policy (CNP). The CNP—which brings together powerful conservative leaders, wealthy donors, and Christian activists, was designed to pressure the Reagan administration to adhere to Christian ideals. These groups would later play a key role in shaping Republican politics, and became essential to Trump’s political strategy.
Though Trump is in no way a religious beacon, he understood the importance of evangelical support. To secure it, he promised to oppose abortion—putting it in writing—and released a list of names of religious conservative Supreme Court nominees that could replace the recent opening. After gaining their support and winning the election, many CNP and Heritage Foundation members made up Trump’s staff.
Trump doesn’t want to lose his support while simultaneously not wanting to appear sexist, racist, etc. This is why he continues to say things like “there were very fine people on both sides”, in reference to a clash between neo-nazis and counter protesters in 2017, and telling white supremacists to “stand back and stand by.” This keeps his support and base while also being vague enough to argue that he didn’t mean it. Trump could be telling the truth when he says he wants nothing to do with Project 2025. Despite his political maneuvering, it’s clear that Trump doesn’t necessarily share all the values of the groups that helped elect him. He has done what was necessary to gain power, but the ideological forces behind movements like Project 2025—an agenda promoted by the Heritage Foundation—are far more powerful than any single politician, including Trump.
While this article has focused on the evangelical vote, there is another story to be told about how Republicans have secured support from anti-government and conspiracy theory-driven voters—a subject that will have to wait for another article.
The takeaway from all of this? Trumpism doesn’t end with Trump. To effectively challenge it, one has to understand its origins, ideological underpinnings, and the groups behind it. Reducing Trumpism to the personality of one man overlooks the broader movement that will persist long after he is gone.
By Lauren Gerber
This article is an opinion piece whose contents represent the standpoint of its author and not UPF Lund or The Perspective’s editorial board.
October 8, 2024
