In the 2020 election, what happened with the religious vote that was seen as so crucial to President Donald Trump’s upset win four years ago?

Take your pick:

* Not much changed, according to Religion News Service’s Yonat Shimron.

* A small decline in Trump support among White Catholics represented a slight but significant change, NPR’s Tom Gjelten proposed.

* President-elect Joe Biden “swung the religious vote” just enough to defeat Trump, Politico’s Gabby Orr reported.

* White evangelicals “stuck by” Trump and, despite Biden’s win, “still took heart in their strong presence at the polls and the GOP’s success in down-ballot races,” according to The Associated Press’ Elana Schor and David Crary.

* Biden closed the gap among White evangelicals to the tune of “well over four million votes nationally,” Biden supporter Michael Wear proclaimed in a New York Times op-ed.

Wait, what?

“I think there's been a bit of, ‘I'm going to read whichever exit polls make my efforts seem fruitful,’ among a certain group of people in the post-election time period,” said Ryan Burge, an assistant professor of political science at Eastern Illinois University. His research focuses on the intersection of religiosity and political behavior, especially in the U.S.

The problem, according to Burge, is that exit polling “is very unreliable.” He pointed to a USA Today column by Robert Griffin making the case that more time is needed for reliable analysis.

“The only data that I am trusting right now comes from the CCES. Which is not an exit poll but is the gold standard for political science now,” Burge said, referring to the Cooperative Congressional Election Study.

Numbers cited by Burge, a contributor to Religion Unplugged and GetReligion, indicate that “there's some movement among Mainline Protestants, but really none to speak of in other Christian groups.”

Stay tuned.

If the next four years are anything like the past four, we’ll analyze — and reanalyze — the religious vote until Election Day 2024.

Power Up: The Week’s Best Reads

1. L.A. megachurch pastor mocks pandemic health orders, even as church members fall ill: When it comes to the coronavirus, John MacArthur is an atheist.

“There is no pandemic,” MacArthur has said of COVID-19.

That revealing quote opens Los Angeles Times writer Jaclyn Cosgrove’s in-depth story on the 81-year-old pastor and his Southern California megachurch’s defiance of a government order against meeting indoors.

2. After Hurricane Dorian, a layup helped the Bahamas rebuild: Every now and then, the news could use a few warm fuzzies.

Here is one, courtesy of Associated Press sports writer Tim Reynolds:

Nathan Bain provided one of college basketball’s signature moments last season, a buzzer-beating layup in overtime to give unheralded Stephen F. Austin a stunning upset over Duke on Nov. 26. 2019. Duke was the No. 1 team in the country at the time and hadn’t lost a nonconference game on its home floor in nearly 20 years.

But that became just a sliver of the story that night. Bain’s layup won a game — and rebuilt a home, rebuilt a school and rebuilt a church, all of it directly impacting the lives of hundreds of Bahamians.

“It was a game and it became a bigger cause,” Bain said. “More often than not, people want to do the right thing. And I think that’s what happened with us, that people just saw the opportunity to be good human beings.”

CONTINUE READING “Lies, Damned Lies, Statistics: For Biden, Religious Vote Was Crucial — Maybe,” by Bobby Ross, Jr., at Religion Unplugged.