I used quotation marks in my title to signify that there really is no unified Catholic vote in US politics. That is, Catholics comprise a large segment of the population, about 21% of the USA, and usually about one-fourth of the adult voting population. 1 Many political observers create a misleading portrait when they refer to the phenomenon of “the Catholic vote” as though it is a united force waiting to be mobilized by one political party or the other.
The Catholic electorate in the USA is diverse and varied. White Catholics vote differently than Latino Catholics (which is the fastest growing population). Frequent church-going Catholics vote very differently than Catholics who occasionally or rarely attend services.
The most substantial concentrations of Catholics are in the Midwest, northeast, mid-Atlantic regions, and somewhat the west coast. In presidential elections, it is in many of the usually competitive states in the Electoral College , such as Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin, that Catholics have their most significant numbers.
The self-identified Catholic vote in the USA actually is remarkably similar to the overall national vote totals in modern elections. In 2012, President Obama won 50% and Mitt Romney 48% of the Catholic vote, the same percentages by which each won the national vote. In 2008, Barack Obama won 54% of the Catholic vote, while his overall national vote total was 53%. In 2004, George W. Bush won similar sized majorities both of the national vote and among Catholics. In 2000, Al Gore barely won the popular vote and the Catholic vote as well. In 1996, Bill Clinton won a comfortable national majority and an even better turnout among Catholics. The notable exception to this trend is the 2016 election in which Democrat Hillary Clinton won the national popular vote and Republican Donald J. Trump won the Catholic vote by an impressive 52–45%.
It is hard to imagine the Catholic vote as a monolithic force given these varied results. The Catholic vote is deeply divided between the major parties. It is important to understand the diversity of that group and the challenges any candidate faces when trying to make special appeals to Catholics.
The Catholic Voter in the USA
It was not always this way. The Catholic vote in the USA was once nearly monolithic. Catholics were once a key constituency of the New Deal Coalition that anchored the Democratic Party. From the 1930s to about the 1970s, the Democratic Party’s coalition of voters formed during the New Deal comprised Catholics, blacks, Jews, many immigrant groups, and labor union members.
Many Catholics of that era were from immigrant families, lived in the inner-cities, and they identified with labor union sentiments. Thus, low economic status and ethnicity largely explained Catholic support for the Democrats during that era.
The splintering of the Catholic vote began in the 1970s when Democratic presidential nominee George McGovern in 1972 appealed to abortion rights advocates and the Supreme Court in 1973 issued the Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion. The Republican Party began to directly appeal to anti-abortion rights voters and many religious Catholics began to shift their political allegiances. President Richard M. Nixon rejected the proposals of his own appointed “Commission on Population Growth and the American Future” that there be public financing of abortion and of family planning services and contraceptive devices for minors. 2 The GOP picked up other issues as well to appeal to religious Catholics. Government aid to parochial schools became a staple of Republican appeals to Catholics. Conservative political strategists of that era believed that if Catholics in the northeast and Midwest aligned on social and moral issues with evangelical Protestants throughout the South, this alliance would fundamentally change US politics for years. There is evidence that the splintering of the once solid Catholic vote for the Democratic Party has had a big impact on elections and policy.
Indeed, from 1980 to 2004 only one Democratic presidential candidate secured a majority of the Catholic vote : Bill Clinton in his 1996 landslide reelection. Al Gore won more Catholic votes than George W. Bush in 2000, but less than 50% nonetheless due to votes for third-party candidate Ralph Nader. Bush improved on Bob Dole’s showing among Catholics by an impressive 12%, according to National Election Studies data.
Nonetheless, religious beliefs are not the dominant influence on the voting behavior of many Catholics. Unlike conservative evangelical Protestants who had the Moral Majority and now the Christian Coalition , there is no single political-based organization that mobilizes Catholics as a voting bloc. The Church hierarchy is sometimes reluctant to offer signals of voting preferences. And even when certain US Catholic Bishops offer such signals, most Catholic voters ignore these appeals.
The loosening of the Democratic Party identity and voting among Catholics occurred in part due to economic trends and population shifts. Although their parents or grandparents were of the immigrant underclass and loyal Democrats , many Catholics today have achieved economic success, moved to the suburbs, and become Independents or even Republicans. One scholar of Catholic voting trends, the late William Prendergast, stated that the Catholic community has experienced the same “homogenization” of other immigrant groups in the USA. “Catholics went through the melting pot and came out very much like other Americans”, he wrote. 3
In brief, Catholics are now more educated, wealthy, suburban, and employed in the higher professions than ever before. Many Catholic professionals are business owners who care about economic growth, trade, and taxes, whereas their parents and grandparents focused more on economic fairness, the minimum wage, and welfare. The Republican Party’s strong embrace of conservative social issue positions also has appealed to the very traditional, regular church-going Catholics who care more about such issues as abortion and contraception than the economy or foreign policy. Some of them maintain that most policy issues are negotiable, but some moral issues are “non-negotiable” and thus central to their voting decisions.
Nonetheless, the shift away from the once Democratic Party dominance of the Catholic vote has not meant a full embrace of the Republican Party by Catholics. Thus, the existence of what is called the Catholic swing vote in US elections. Democrats experienced substantial losses in party identification among Catholics, but Republicans experienced only moderate gains. Rising incomes among Catholics, as with many previous marginalized groups, was good for Republicans for many years, given that in the past higher incomes and higher education tracked with Republican support in the electorate. Today high-income earners are splitting their votes between the parties and the more highly educated Americans are strongly voting Democratic. In the past 2 decades, the Democratic Party share of Catholic identifiers has dropped about ten percentage points, whereas the Republican gain is less than half of that amount. Unless the current trend reverses, Republicans can no longer count on increased educational and economic achievement as a vehicle for improving their standing with Catholics.
Like the rest of the electorate, Catholics have become increasingly independent of the political parties. The trend among partisan identifiers is increased Republicanism among white Catholics (who are about 60% of all Catholics, but declining) and increased support for Democrats among new immigrant, non-white Catholics , especially the fast-growing Latino population which is about one-third of all Catholics. In 2016, about 60% of white Catholics voted for Republican Donald J. Trump and about two-thirds of Latino Catholics voted for Democrat Hillary Clinton . Significantly, given the closeness of the 2016 election in key battleground states, Trump received about 10% more Latino votes than did Mitt Romney in 2012 and the widely predicted Latino voting surge against Trump never materialized. In the 2012 election, a majority of white Catholics voted for Mitt Romney and about three-quarters of Latino Catholics voted for President Obama. In 2008, a majority of white Catholics voted for John McCain; two-thirds of Latino Catholics supported Barack Obama . As the white component of the Catholic vote declines, and the Latino component increases, the political fortunes of Democrats nationally should improve. Today about half of US Catholics under 40 years of age are Hispanic .
Republicans have strong support among those Catholics who attend religious services often. Democrats have strong support among the so-called nominal or cultural Catholics. Indeed, in 2016, GOP presidential nominee Trump won a comfortable majority of the votes of weekly (or more often) church-attending Catholics (56–40%). Given the substantial numbers of Catholic voters in the key upper Midwest states that determined the outcome of the 2016 presidential election, this showing by Trump was clearly a key to his victory. Trump and Clinton split the occasional church-attending Catholic vote and Clinton commanded a 31% margin over Trump among Catholics who do not attend religious services. In 2012, GOP nominee Romney won a majority of weekly (or more often church-attending Catholics) and Obama’s Catholic majority was anchored by his strong support from occasional and non-church-attending Catholics.
The Catholic identity of politicians does not appear to mean much to most Catholic voters today. For my parents’ generation—my grandparents on my mother’s side of the family were Italian immigrants and devout Catholics—identity mattered a lot. When John F. Kennedy ran for president in 1960 he commanded huge majorities of Catholic voters, who took enormous pride that one of their own could become president. 4 The only other Catholic previously nominated for president, New York Governor Alfred E. Smith in 1928, lost his campaign in part due to anti-Catholic bigotry in the country at that time. Nonetheless, the Gallup polling organization has estimated that likely 85–90% of Catholics voted for Smith that year. 5
Even by 1960, many Americans wondered if it was possible for a Catholic to be elected in a heavily Protestant country. Much of that doubt centered on the outright hostility to his candidacy among many prominent evangelicals who had warned their supporters of the dangers of putting a Catholic in the White House. The president of the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) wrote to pastors that “public opinion is changing in favor of the church of Rome. We dare not sit idly by – voiceless and voteless”. Christianity Today editorialized that the Vatican “does all in its power to control the governments of nations”. 6 To overcome fears among some Americans of a Catholic as president, Kennedy gave a speech in Houston before a group of Protestant ministers in which he pledged that if elected he would exercise independent governing judgment and not take direction from the Vatican.
Today, no one can imagine such a speech by a Catholic candidate for the presidency. We have had Catholics as nominees for president and vice president. The immediate past vice president Joe Biden is Catholic, as are four of the current nine members of the US Supreme Court . The 2016 Democratic vice presidential nominee for President Senator Tim Kaine (Va.) is Catholic and a former missionary, and even Vice President Mike Pence calls himself “an evangelical Catholic”. In 2012 as well, both vice presidential nominees were Catholic. It is considered quite ordinary now.
After 1960 and the breaking of the Catholic barrier to the presidency, there is little evidence that having a Catholic on the national ticket improves a party’s chances with Catholic voters . Barry Goldwater (R), George McGovern (D), and Walter Mondale (D) all lost massive landslides with Catholic vice presidential nominees (William E. Miller, Sargent Shriver, and Geraldine Ferraro , respectively) and Hillary Clinton (D) lost the presidency with a Catholic vice presidential nominee.
And Catholic voters similarly will vote against one of their own, if the candidate’s policies do not align with their preferences. In 2004, John Kerry , a Catholic and former seminary student, lost the overall Catholic vote to a Methodist, George W. Bush . 7 White Catholics backe...