Authoritarian followers

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

9. People who belong to religious denominations that encourage

an authoritarian world-view (God as the strict, punishing father) and/or have an authoritarian hierarchy (you must obey the clergy and accept what they say without question) are probably going to be Trump supporters. These are mainly the fundamentalist Protestant denominations and conservative Catholics. Some other denominations (e.g., Episcopalians, ELCA Lutherans, Unitarians, UCC) tend to encourage free thought rather than unthinking obedience. Members of these denominations tend to be liberal.

There isn't a perfect Venn diagram overlap suggesting that all Trump supporters are religious as opposed to all atheists being liberal. I know a couple of Trumpers who wouldn't set foot in a church except at gunpoint, but they are all in for Trump because they think he'll cut their taxes and they hated Hillary. The fact that Trump is actively furthering right-wing Christian dominionism doesn't seem to bother them in the least. But these people are also authoritarian followers in the sense that they love the idea of a "strong" leader and a military that can crush everybody else's. They are the flag-waving America First types. So it seems to me that the characteristic most likely to predict support for Trump is authoritarianism more than religion.