Iowa caucus: Trump counts on evangelicals to carry him to victory BBC
Iowa's influential evangelical voters were once decidedly lukewarm on Donald Trump. But if recent polls are accurate, born-again Christians will carry him to victory on Monday in the Republican caucuses. What has changed?
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Evangelical support is crucial here in Iowa, with born-again Christians expected to make up around two-thirds of all Republican caucusgoers.
They are a diverse voting bloc - made up of various denominations and including more traditional churchgoers along with others who may not even regularly go to a church, yet still define themselves as evangelical.
In 2016, Mr Trump picked up just 22% of this group on the way to a second-place finish behind Texas Senator Ted Cruz, who like previous Iowa Republican winners made faith a major part of his campaign.
But since that time, when many were still sceptical of the blunt-talking New York businessman trailed by sex scandals, Mr Trump has made born-again Christians a key part of his voter base. In this Iowa caucus, surveys suggest he will get the support of roughly half of evangelical voters.
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Steve Scheffler, a Trump supporter and president of the influential Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition, said that Mr Trump had delivered for the religious right, and they expected him to do so again at a moment that many see as the most important election in their lifetimes.
"Evangelical voters know that we live in a society where things have gone awry," he said, mentioning culture war issues over gender identity and "wokeness".
"They believe things are very bad, and if they don't get involved, they are going to get much worse."
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Christians, he said, need to boldly demand that conservative religious values be injected into the heart of American government. "Our country was never meant to be run without God."
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Politics and religion fuse
If the polls turn out to be accurate, another crucial factor might be an evolving sense of what it means to be evangelical - one that is increasingly aligned with Mr Trump's particular flavour of right-wing politics.
Although church attendance is in long-term decline across the country, according to the Pew Research Center the number of white Americans describing themselves as "evangelical" went up during Mr Trump's presidency. And the group most likely to start using that label to describe themselves were the president's supporters.
