It\u2019s one of the central contradictions of American politics: that there\u2019s no such thing as the \u201cCatholic vote,\u201d yet the Catholics vote still matters.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s no \u201cCatholic vote\u201d in terms of Catholics representing an electoral bloc that votes according to what their bishops tell them, or in lockstep with the tenets of their religion. Yet winning Catholic voters has been essential to almost every presidential victory in modern times. And the defection of Catholics voters has played a role in some of the most consequential congressional turnovers in recent history \u2014 from 1994 to 2014 \u2014 making Catholics the ultimate swing voters. And for Democrats, that could be bad news.<\/p>\n
While Catholics have been swing voters since Richard Nixon\u2019s second term, white Catholics are now identifying as Republican by historic margins. According to the most recent polling from the Pew Research Center, 53 percent of white Catholics now favor the GOP, versus 39 percent who favor the Democrats\u2014the largest point spread in the history of the Pew poll. And for the first time, white Catholics are more Republican than the voting group usually considered the ultimate Republicans: white Protestants (a designation that includes both mainline and evangelical Protestants).<\/p>\n
These are ominous signs for the Democrats, evincing a new and growing allegiance with the Republican Party that has long-term implications.<\/p>\n
So why are white Catholics abandoning the Democratic Party? There are some long-term trends at play. Steve Krueger, head of the group Catholic Democrats, notes that conservative bishops have been beating the war drums since the George W. Bush administration, even going so far in some cases as to argue that \u201cgood\u201d Catholics can\u2019t vote for Democrats because of their support for abortion rights and, more recently, same-sex marriage \u2014 which has resulted in an increased politicization of the church. \u201cThe bishops have gone from pastoral advocates to partisan enforcers,\u201d Krueger said. \u201cIt\u2019s gone from the old saying of \u2018Pray, Pay and Obey,\u2019 to \u2018Obey, Pay and Pray\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n
Stephen Schneck of Catholic University\u2019s Institute for Policy Research and Catholic Studies has noted that there\u2019s been a certain \u201cdistillation\u201d of the Catholic vote as a record number of presumably more liberal-leaning Catholics \u2014 some one-third of those raised Catholic \u2014 have left the faith altogether. \u201cMore and more of those who remain are those who actively choose to embrace the church and its teachings,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n
But neither of these trends explains why white Catholics have abandoned the Democratic Party so suddenly and so dramatically. After all, in 2008 Barack Obama managed to keep his margin of loss of white Catholic voters to John McCain to just 5 points. But four years later, he lost the white Catholic vote to Mitt Romney by a stunning 19 points.<\/p>\n
Krueger points to the Catholic bishop\u2019s demonization in 2011 of the \u201ccontraceptive mandate\u201d in the Affordable Care Act, and their subsequent ginning up of the war on \u201creligious liberty\u201d \u2014 which was joined by elements of the religious right and fused with its war on Obamacare \u2014 as another factor helping to drive Catholics toward the GOP. And the numbers bear Krueger out. According to Pew, between 2009 and 2014, the number of white Catholics who said the Obama administration \u2014 and by inference the Democratic Party \u2014 was \u201cunfriendly to religion\u201d more than doubled from 17 percent to 36 percent.<\/p>\n
Pew gives even more hints about what\u2019s driving the shift with its breakdown of the issues that proved important to various groups of religious voters in the 2014 midterms. It turns out, for example, that Catholic Republicans are just about as dissatisfied as Republican Evangelicals with what they see as the GOP\u2019s failure to cut spending. A total of 47 percent of Catholic Republicans say the GOP is \u201ctoo liberal\u201d on spending, which is just 1 point lower than Evangelical Republicans. The other area where white Catholics feel the GOP isn\u2019t being tough enough is immigration: Just under one-third say the GOP is too liberal here, again similar to the 35 percent of white Evangelicals who think there should be more of a crackdown on undocumented immigrants.<\/p>\n
This concern about government overreach with the Affordable Care Act and out-of-control spending, as well as about illegal immigration, points to a \u201cTea Party-ization\u201d of white Catholics. And trends in Congress bear this out. Even as Catholic voters first began to shift their loyalties in terms of presidential elections, the House of Representatives remained a Catholic Democrat bastion. In 2009, there were almost three times as many Catholic Democrats as Catholic Republicans \u2014 98 Democrats to 37 Republicans. But as of 2015, House Republicans who identify as Catholic outnumber Catholic Democrats \u2014 69 to 68 \u2014 for the first time ever.<\/p>\n