(ANALYSIS) If you ask the chattering class who pay attention to the intersection of religion and politics to name one statistic about voting patterns, I can guess with a high degree of certainty which one that they will recall:

Eighty-one percent of White evangelicals voted for Donald Trump.

I speak to members of the media on a regular basis. I get asked some questions with such frequency that I basically have stock answers to them, which I recite dutifully on the phone or via Zoom, using the exact same syntax and verbiage. One of those questions is simply, why do so many evangelicals support Donald Trump?

When I did an interview with Anderson Cooper for “60 Minutes,” I got asked a version of that question at least three times during the hour-long exchange we had. I answered it the same way every time.

It’s a transactional relationship. Donald Trump is an empty vessel of a candidate. I believe he has no internal moral framework. His calculus is quite simple. You give me votes, I give you what you want.

In 2016, nearly 4 in 10 votes cast for the Republican nominee came from White evangelicals. In return, Roe was overturned. Was electing a thrice-married casino magnate worth it? Many evangelicals will say that saving innocent babies from death justified the price of a Trump vote.

Put simply, the ends justify the means.

However, I bristle at the underlying motivation of that question — why do White evangelicals vote for Trump? Because the answer is even simpler: They vote for Trump because White evangelicals are Republicans, and Donald Trump is the standard bearer of the GOP. That’s the same reason they voted for McCain in 2008 and Romney in 2012.

However, I wanted to take a long view of this question — have White evangelicals always been Republicans, or is this a very recent phenomenon?

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Ryan Burge is an assistant professor of political science at Eastern Illinois University, a pastor in the American Baptist Church and the co-founder and frequent contributor to Religion in Public, a forum for scholars of religion and politics to make their work accessible to a more general audience. His research focuses on the intersection of religiosity and political behavior, especially in the U.S. Follow him on X at @ryanburge.