More Republicans say Trump is person of faith than GOP challengers, Biden: survey

More Republicans say that former President Trump is a person of faith than several other Republican figures, his GOP primary challengers and President Biden, a new poll found. In the survey, , 64 percent of Republicans said Trump was a person of faith, up from 53 percent in October. Former Vice President Mike Pence, an evangelical Christian, came in second with Republicans, with 56 percent calling him a man of faith.

GOP respondents were less likely to say Trump is “religious,” and pointed to his “support for religious people but not his personal religiosity, as their reasoning for saying he is a man of faith.” Unlike Pence and other prominent Republicans, Trump rarely talks about his religious belief. His personal history is one that would seem, at a glance, to potentially be troubling for Christian conservatives since he has been divorced twice and has faced legal consequences over, among other things, the paying of hush money to a former adult film star to stay quiet about an alleged affair.

Still, the former president has consistently earned the support of social conservatives. The survey found that 24 percent of independent voters think Trump is a person of faith, compared to just 10 percent of Democrats. Forty four percent of Republicans said former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley, another White House contender, is a person of faith, compared to 34 percent for Florida Gov.

Ron DeSantis. Both entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie earned 22 percent, the survey found. The survey notes that Haley was raised Sikh but converted to Christianity, DeSantis is Catholic and Ramaswamy is Hindu. Only 13 percent of Republicans say Biden, a practicing Catholic who regularly talks about his religious beliefs, is a person of faith.

Thirty six percent of independents and 69 percent of Democrats say the same. The survey was conducted Nov. 21 22 among 1,012 registered voters. Its margin of error is plus or minus 3.1 percentage points..