Faith Outreach
Biden gained big with white evangelicals with an 11% net gain compared to 2016; this shift did not happen in a vacuum.
The 2020 cycle has brought more direct outreach to faith voters than any other time in the past 30 years, especially in key swing states. Joe Biden outspent Donald Trump in Christian radio ads nearly 50-1, taking not a single faith vote for granted, especially in highly religious communities like Georgia.
Georgia is a prime example of the impact faith voters can have
Exit polls did not report on African American faith voters, but Biden was able to improve his performance with Georgia’s white evangelicals voters by a net of 16% over Hillary Clinton, accounting for 245,000 of his votes.
Compared to 2016, Georgia’s white evangelical voters swung 14 points from Trump to Biden, and Biden picked up an additional 2 points from evangelicals who voted 3rd party in 2016.
Grassroots organizing and the official Biden campaign invested heavily in faith outreach in Georgia.
A Faith Voter’s project, Evangelicals For Biden (EFB), directly engaged over 1.3 million evangelical voters (both African American and white) in Georgia through a 3-month email and digital advertising campaign, which included delivering over 3.5 million ad impression with EFB’s positive faith message into Fulton County alone from Nov 1-3. Over 200,000 Christian voters clicked through to the campaign’s website or took social media actions in response.
Power of the Black Church
Stacey Abrams led Black faith voters in Georgia with a strategy based on “math, motivation, and morality.” She ushered in a surge of voter registrations among young people and minorities. Abrams and grassroots organizations across Georgia helped to register more than 800,000 new voters in the once-red state.
Abrams and her extended team of Black community leaders and organizers also won over much of Georgia’s religious population, appealing to their faith values as many have been turned off by the Republican party because of Donald Trump’s frequently crude words.
With Abrams’ help, Georgia has now become a “purple” state, sending its electoral votes to Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election.
Abrams, born and raised Methodist, credits her faith for her activism and understanding of the deep values that motivate people to get out and vote.
“My faith is central to the work that I do, in that I not only hold Christian values, but my faith tradition as a Methodist tells me that the most profound demonstration of our faith is service,” she said.
Abrams has already raised $6 million for the upcoming Georgia Senate runoff elections in January.
Called to Serve
People all across the United States continue to work hard to elect people who represent our Christian values and will enact change in Washington. But they shouldn’t have to do it alone.
Join us in making America a safer and more just place by having conversations with friends and family and sharing our resources so that they can spread the word too!