While many Republican voters are expected to tune in for Wednesday evening's debate — the first showdown between GOP hopefuls in the 2024 cycle — there's one influential chunk of the electorate that's going to be looking for very specific issues to be addressed: faith-based, grassroots conservatives.
First identified as the "religious right," the conservative voting bloc known for spirited grassroots activism rose to prominence and power through the 1970s thanks to the work of Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, James Dobson, and others who successfully fused Republican politics with issues of import to religious Americans. The resulting "moral majority" has continued to wield significant electoral sway thanks to the efforts of groups that've kept faith-based voters and right-of-center politics paired together, such as the Faith & Freedom Coalition led by Founder and Chairman Ralph Reed and Executive Director Timothy Head.
Despite the significant lead in primary polls held by former President Donald Trump and his decision to boycott Wednesday night's debate, Head says both this week's debate and the next debate announced for September will "certainly be meaningful" as they highlight the "distinction" between the right and left side of the political spectrum in which "the political right seems to relish the competition" presented by debates and the opportunity to work through criticism while the "left seems to squelch any competition."
One thing Head says he'll be watching for Wednesday night is whether the eight candidates who met the criteria and chose to appear on the debate stage "take it upon themselves to attack each other" in the absence of the frontrunner in an attempt to "solidify themselves as the alternative to Trump" in the minds of those set to vote in Republican primaries.
Yet, as Head reminded, there's a "bit of a Goldilocks principle" applied by Republican voters that debating candidates will need to keep in mind — voters want to see candidates go after each other a little bit, but not too much — otherwise they risk being seen as "overly contentious" and more of a critic than a leader.
For Trump's part — despite not appearing on the debate stage this week — Head says the former president retains sympathy from faith-based voters. Specifically, the "repeated indictments" against him seem to "corroborate, in those voters' minds, that Trump is perceived as a threat by various leftist entities or ideologies." Head described it as a "kind of sliding scale" where the more Trump is attacked, "the more sympathetic center-right voters, but especially faith-based voters, find him."
Head also explained what much of the media gets wrong about faith-based voters when it comes to polls aimed at gauging their priorities in an election cycle. On abortion, for example, an issue that surged to political prominence in May 2022 when a draft opinion in the Dobbs case was leaked and the opinion was officially released overturning Roe, Head says faith-based voters' reaction has been sometimes "misrepresented and misunderstood." While the issue of life has long been a core value for faith-based voters, it's currently more of what Head calls a "latent issue" that now exists "under the water level" along with family and religious liberty issues.
Are these policy areas important? Of course. But, as Head explained, "none of them individually are the only issue that matters to faith-based voters." Indeed. As polling ahead of the 2024 primaries has shown, the economy and security are regularly among the top-two issues for faith-based voters. According to Head, that's because they're viewed as being in "jeopardy" and are presenting as an "imminent threat" in faith-based voters' lives. Border security, for example, "shows up on polling [for 2024] not because faith-based voters just became interested in border security, it's because there's an imminent threat," causing the issue to "pop in polling" where it may have been more of a latent issue under the previous administration.
Now, in a post-Roe world that has seen more than two dozen states eliminate or partially eliminate abortion, faith-based voters see the issue of life as one on which "Republicans and conservatives are winning," Head explained. That view on abortion means that, especially because the economy and other issues are seen as more urgent today, life is "not going to show up as the number one thing" on faith-based voters' minds this cycle.
Still, Head said that it's "important for candidates to be clear and have conviction" when it comes to talking about these latent issues such as abortion in the debates and on the campaign trail, but it's also important for them to "move on to other issues that are top of mind for all voters" such as the economy or national and domestic security.