The Catholic vote in 2016

[rug]

Thomas Reese | Feb. 4, 2016

Now that the Iowa caucuses are over, attention turns to the primaries in both the Republican and Democratic parties beginning with New Hampshire. There has been much discussion of how evangelicals will vote in the Republican primaries and how women and minorities will vote in the Democratic primaries, but little has been said about Catholics.

E.J. Dionne is fond of saying that "there is no Catholic vote and it is important." His point is that Catholics do not vote as a bloc. But they are important because they have voted for the winner of the popular vote in almost every presidential election since Roosevelt (they did not vote for Ike in 1952). We might modify Dionne’s saying to read "there is no Catholic vote and that is why it is important."

Today the Catholic vote is divided into two major parts, white Catholics and Hispanic Catholics. Traditionally, white Catholics voted Democratic beginning in 1928 when Al Smith was pilloried by anti-Catholic bigots supporting the Republican candidate. The Great Depression and the New Deal solidified their support for the Democratic Party.

Today, however, the children and grandchildren of these working-class white Catholics are just as likely to vote Republican. Thanks to their parents, the GI Bill, and a prosperous economy, these children went to college and joined the professional and business classes. Their taxes went up with their incomes and they forgot their roots.

http://ncronline.org/blogs/faith-and-justice/catholic-vote-2016

[beemer27]

1. There is no Catholic voting bloc

I am only 65, yet I have seen major changes in the voting patterns of Catholics in my short life time. When I was young, they voted almost all Democratic, now there is no way to categorize or label the political bent of Catholics as a group. In Catholic grade school, we studied the candidates and discussed what was happening in the political world. We usually decided to support the Democratic candidate. When we went home, we were not surprised to find that our parents held the same views and values that we had learned in school. Most families were working class, and even the business owners in our church supported Democrats. Over the years this all changed. Now any group of Catholics will have political views as varied as the general population. It would take a MAJOR screw-up by a candidate to cause a return to bloc voting by Catholics. If any candidate could tap into some way to unite the Catholics to vote as a bloc, they would have the largest religious group in the US as a base. This would be an advantage that would make them very hard to beat.