White evangelical war support eroded as Iraq casualties mounted but stayed above national rates

Evidence

By the end of Bush’s second term, however, evangelical confidence once again began to falter. As the death toll mounted among US forces in Iraq, support for the war diminished among Americans generally, and among American evangelicals. Evangelicals still supported the war at rates significantly higher than the general public, but between September 2006 and January 2007 white evangelical Protestants who believed the United States made the right decision in using force in Iraq to oust Saddam Hussein dropped from 71 percent to 58 percent. White evangelical support for the president reflected a similar disenchantment. Seventy-nine percent of white evangelicals had supported Bush’s 2004 reelection, but as his warrior status diminished, his approval rate steadily declined. — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne, 523

Categorization

• XREF: Empirical anchor for the continuity thesis — evangelical identity is warrior/fighter-coded, predicting this 1.6-point-drop-in-favorability pattern and foreshadowing the Trump pivot.