In a 2011 poll conducted by the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) and the Religion News Service, 60 percent of white evangelicals believed a public official who “commits an immoral act in their personal life” cannot “behave ethically and fulfill their duties in their public and professional life.”20 Five years later, an October 2016 poll by PRRI and the Brookings Institution—after the release of the infamous Access Hollywood tape—found that only 20 percent of evangelicals, responding to the same question, thought private immorality meant someone could not behave ethically in public.
