Pastor Joshua Nink prays with Donald Trump after a Sunday service at First Christian Church in Council Bluffs, Iowa, on Jan. 31. | AP Photo Poll: Evangelicals still cool to Trump

Donald Trump is still struggling to win the support of evangelical Republicans, a Gallup poll released Monday found.

The poll found 66 percent of “highly religious” white, non-Hispanic Protestant Republicans approved of Trump in June, an increase from 57 percent in polls from February to May. The June results also show Trump has approval from 73 percent of “moderately religious” and 65 percent of nonreligious white, non-Hispanic Protestant Republicans.


When Sen. Ted Cruz was still in the race, however, Cruz led Trump with 63 percent support from the most religious respondents compared with Trump’s 57 percent. "[W]hile he was still in the race, former candidate Ted Cruz's appeal was significantly higher among highly religious members of this group than among those who were less religious," Gallup observes.

Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, met with nearly 1,000 evangelical leaders last week in New York and announced the creation of an evangelical executive advisory board, which includes former Republican presidential candidate and Minnesota congresswoman Michele Bachmann.

Evangelical leader James Dobson, who was present at the New York gathering, said in an interview published Saturday that Trump had recently accepted “a relationship with Christ."

“I don’t know when it was, but it has not been long,” Dobson said. “I believe he really made a commitment, but he’s a baby Christian.”

The poll was conducted via telephone between June 1-22 among 11,170 adults. The overall margin of error is plus or minus 2 percentage points.