Is Kamala Harris Christian? Is Donald Trump? Here’s what Americans say

Former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris both describe themselves as Christian, but that doesn’t mean Americans see them that way.
New research from The Associated Press and the NORC Center for Public Affairs at the University of Chicago shows that less than half of U.S. adults say the word “Christian” describes Trump or Harris at least somewhat well.
The two candidates also aren’t seen as “religious” by many Americans, the survey found.
“Most don’t think that the words Christian or religious describe either candidate extremely or very well,” researchers wrote.
The labels “Christian” and “religious” are seen as bad fits for Trump, in particular.
Just 36% of Americans said the word “Christian” describes the former president “extremely/very well” (14%) or “somewhat well” (22%), the survey showed.
About the same share of Americans — 35% — said “religious” describes Trump at least somewhat well.
Trump spent most of his life referring to himself as Presbyterian, which is a mainline Protestant denomination, but he shifted to saying he’s a non-denominational Christian while in the White House, as the Deseret News previously reported.
He doesn’t talk often about his personal faith, but he does talk about his efforts to protect American Christians. More conservative Christians credit Trump with boosting religious freedom protections in federal rules and appointing faith friendly justices to the Supreme Court.
These efforts won him lasting support from a variety of religious leaders, and they help explain why the new survey shows that white evangelicals and white Catholics are more likely than members of other faith groups to say Trump better represents their religious views than Harris.
White evangelical Protestants and white Catholics were also the most likely to say that the words “Christian” and “religious” fit the former president.
Those two faith groups show high levels of support for the Republican presidential candidate in general, as the Deseret News previously reported.
Harris took part in both Christian and Hindu religious services growing up because she’s the product of an interfaith marriage.
As an adult, she identifies as Christian and belongs to a Baptist church in San Francisco, but, like Trump, she doesn’t talk often about her faith on the campaign trail, as the Deseret News previously reported.
The survey found that around half of Americans (47%) believe the word “Christian” describes Harris at least somewhat well, while 43% said the same about the word “religious.”
Black Protestants are particularly likely to say both labels fit the vice president. The survey found that 76% of members of this faith group said “Christian” describes Harris at least somewhat well.
Additionally, 59% of Black Protestants said Harris better represents their religious views than Trump.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, white evangelicals see Harris quite differently than Black Protestants, as researchers noted.
“When asked what words best describe each candidate, white evangelicals are particularly likely to say the words Christian, moral, religious, or honest do not describe Harris well,” they wrote.
The new AP/NORC survey is far from the first to find that Americans’ ideas about politicians’ religious identities are different than how politicians describe and present themselves.
For example, a 2021 survey from Pew Research Center found that only around one-third of Republicans saw President Joe Biden as “very” or “somewhat” religious, despite the fact that he is regularly photographed leaving Mass at Catholic churches and speaks about carrying a rosary.
Similarly, a poll conducted by HarrisX for the Deseret News last fall found that Republicans are much more likely to describe Trump as a person of faith than to say the same about Biden or Sen. Mitt Romney.