Trump’s sizable margin of victory among these low attenders yielded a tremendous number of voters. In 2016, 39 percent of all Republican voters attended church less than once a year. In comparison, just 36 percent said that they attended religious services at least once a week.

Low attending Republicans remain a crucial voting bloc for any candidate who wants to be viable during the 2024 primary process and beyond. And their numbers are growing: 44% percent of Republicans attended less than once a year in late 2022, an increase of five points since Trump’s first bid for the White House in 2016.

Over the same period, the percentage of frequent churchgoers has been in decline. In 2008, 44 percent of Republicans reported that they were in church at least once per week. By 2022, that number had slipped to just 35 percent. In comparison, the share of Democrats who attended weekly only declined five percentage points (23 percent to 18 percent) during the same time period.

In other words, the grip that the religious right has on the modern Republican Party is weakening with every election cycle. To survive, the modern Republican Party will have to come to grips with the fact that while many of their voters are people of faith, a growing share (especially among younger Republicans) do not have such deep ties to a religious tradition. Trump’s position on abortion, whether he knows it or not, may actually be the most politically viable one as the composition of the GOP continues to shift toward non-religious Republicans. This was echoed in the sentiments of one voter in Iowa who recently stated, “Personally, if I could snap my fingers, it would not be allowed at all. But I have to be realistic.”

Another area where Trump could moderate and pick up votes is the issue of federal marijuana legalization. In 2020, his administration reiterated their position that it should remain illegal at the federal level. However, polling data says that only half of evangelicals and forty percent of Catholics think that marijuana should remain illegal. His gains among low attending and non-religious Republicans, who largely support legalization, would easily make up for these small losses among religious conservatives.