Evangelicals For Biden: Press Release— Pledge Results

For Immediate Release

October 27, 2020

145,000 in 6 Key States Sign Evangelicals For Biden Pledge

Over 183,000 Christians across the country thus far have pledged their support to Joe Biden, including nearly 145,000 in six key states: Florida, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Ohio.  The table below shows how many in each state have signed the Pledge of the Evangelicals For Biden Campaign, as of Friday, October 23rd.  It compares these totals to Mr. Trump’s margin of victory in each state in 2016.  Such evangelical supporters of Mr. Biden could prove to be the margin of victory in some states, and in others could provide crucial support when combined with other new voters for Mr. Biden.

With 7 days until the election, Evangelicals For Biden (EFB) is already the biggest independent evangelical grassroots campaign ever to support a Democratic presidential candidate.  As comments (below) from EFB’s Facebook page highlight, it has provided encouragement and a sense of belonging for evangelical Biden supporters.

EFB has created encouragement Zoom video conversations with Biden supporters who for the first time are speaking out about supporting a presidential candidate, including Chesney Snelson, 24, from North Carolina: “I support Joe Biden because I feel like he is what America needs right now … We’re all equal in the eyes of God.  And I feel that Joe Biden thinks about everyone … a president for the people.”

With emails and digital ads, EFB has communicated with grassroots evangelicals directly.  This includes creating a presence in the information and digital channels where the Trump campaign is recruiting.  EFB is also targeting faith voters being drawn into QAnon and other conspiracy orbits and redirecting them to better and more truthful content from trusted evangelical leaders.  This counter-programming approach has never been done before, and is paying dividends at both the human and algorithmic referral level with over 20,000 voters in key states diverted from pro-Trump and radicalizing content to the EFB Campaign’s resources with positive messages from trusted evangelical leaders.

This grassroots-grasstops 1-2 punch has been further enhanced by EFB joining forces with another effort that is focused on recruiting evangelical leaders, the Pro-Life Evangelicals For Biden Campaign.  As former mega-church pastor the Rev. Joel Hunter put it, “There are a lot of folks who voted for Trump the first time who will not vote for him the second time.”  That includes Rev. Hunter, who was a spiritual advisor to President Obama but gave Mr. Trump a shot.  Rev. Hunter knows Joe Biden personally, that he is a good man, and is very comfortable supporting him.  So far, over 7,000 evangelical leaders have signed their statement, helping pro-life Christians see that voting for Joe Biden is the right thing to do.

Recent polls are showing that Mr. Biden could achieve historic levels of white evangelical support.  A Marist/PBS/NPR poll (Oct 13) has Biden’s support at 24%, 8 points better that Clinton in 2016, and just 1 point off the high water mark of 25% in 2008 for Obama.  A September poll highlighted by Christianity Today has even bigger, record-shattering support for Biden at over 30 percent.  As for key states, Fox News polls (Sept 23) have Biden at 28% white evangelical support in Pennsylvania and 26% in Ohio.  These 12 and 10 point improvements from 2016 would exceed significantly the Campaign’s goal of up to a 7-point increase.

“Mr. Biden has said he is running to restore the soul of the nation.  We want to help make him president to do just that,” said the Rev. Jim Ball, founder and co-chair of Evangelicals For Biden.