There are enough movable religious voters in critical battleground states that can be swayed to support Vice President Kamala Harris and help her win the November election over former President Donald Trump, according to Minneapolis pastor Doug Pagitt.
"Democrats more broadly need to embrace the idea that evangelicals, and especially white male evangelicals, are worth winning and can be won without the party compromising its values," Pagitt wrote on MSNBC on Sunday.
A poll that Pagitt's group commissioned four years ago "showed that in swing states, Trump's lack of kindness was driving evangelical and Catholic voters away in large enough numbers to potentially affect the outcome of the election."
This demonstrated that if Democrats want to win evangelical support, the party must take a "concerted, grassroots effort to reach these voters, listen to them and bring them along on a journey to help them understand it's OK for them to let concern for the common good, and not allegiance to a political party, determine how they vote," Pagitt wrote.
One way to mount such an effort, Pagitt said, is by using a strategy similar to one Vote Common Good carried out ahead of the 2020 presidential election specifically in Kent County, Michigan.
"We held voter rallies and roundtables; put up billboards juxtaposing the words of Jesus Christ with those of Trump; sent thousands of postcards to evangelical voters; and trained multiple local Democratic candidates on how to engage with faith voters," Pagitt wrote. "Our message to the 25% of the Kent County electorate that identified as evangelical was simple: Trump lacks kindness and it's OK not to vote for the Republican."
The strategy worked, according to Pagitt, as "Trump beat Clinton by three points in Kent County in 2016," but following Vote Common Good's election efforts, "in 2020, he lost to Biden there by 6 points, a 9-point swing."
"Biden did better than Hillary Clinton did with evangelical voters, and if we come together and don't leave these folks to Trump, I think it's possible for Harris to receive the highest level of evangelical support since Jimmy Carter got roughly half the evangelical vote in 1976," Pagitt concluded. "And if that were to happen, it would break the back of the MAGA movement."