Ron Brownstein: “The key to that breakthrough was Trump’s success in carving a new fault line in the GOP primary electorate. Traditionally, a critical divide among Republican voters has been between those who identify as evangelical Christians and those who do not.”
“But Trump in 2016 split the GOP electorate more along lines of education, drawing commanding support from voters without a four-year college degree, whether or not they identified as evangelical Christians. Trump’s big margins among those non-college evangelicals proved critical in allowing him to win a series of culturally conservative states, especially across the South, that Sen. Ted Cruz, Trump’s principal rival on the right in 2016, had expected to propel him to the nomination.”
“If anything, those blue-collar evangelical Christians may be even more important to Trump’s prospects in 2024.”
