On this issue of the cult of Trumpism, Christian nationalism and American exceptionalism: how did we arrive at this point? Americans, and indeed people from all over the world, want to know what in the hell is going on, in these final days of Trump, the mad king who seems bent on destroying democracy even more so than he has done over the last four years of his presidency. Always a shatterer of norms — and indeed basic, common decency — Trump received a record number of votes in the 2020 election. According to exit polls, Trump received 46.9% of the votes, as compared to Biden’s 51.4%. That means nearly half of Americans, for whatever their reasons, voted Trump. And that 46.9% included, similar to the 2016 presidential election, a significant number of white evangelicals who once again cast their ballots for Trump.

According to Frank Newport in an article on the Gallup site, who cited two different surveys conducted of white evangelicals on or around election day, “The AP VoteCast survey shows that 81% of White evangelical Protestant voters went for Trump this year, compared with 18% who voted for Biden. The Edison exit polls estimate that 76% of White evangelicals voted for Trump, 24% for Biden.

Like any survey (and perhaps more than most surveys because of their complicated methodologies designed to capture both in-person and early/mail-in voting), the numbers produced by both of these research endeavors are estimates with margins of…