Will Catholics Pick the Next President?
50 years of election analysis says “yes”—and that’s great news for Trump
Catholic voters have strong track record when it comes to deciding the winner in presidential elections. In 2024, they appear poised to do so again in key states, where fresh polling shows they are lining up solidly behind Donald Trump.
How strong is that record? The single exception in the past 50 years was the 2000 election, when Catholics backed Al Gore over George W. Bush in a razor-thin election. That proved a one-off—4 years later, Bush won the Catholic vote over John Kerry, the Catholic Democratic Senator from Massachusetts.
While only about 20% of adults in the U.S. identify themselves as Catholic, they do form a decisive voting bloc in critical swing states like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Georgia.
For generations, that proved a boon to the Democratic Party, which long dominated the Catholic vote; but recent polls show them shifting heavily to the Republicans. Pew Research data indicates slightly more than half of Catholic registered voters are now identifying with or leaning toward Republicans. The shift has been gradual but significant since the time of John F. Kennedy, another Democratic Senator from Massachusetts, who won an estimated 80% of the Catholic vote in 1960.
“Catholics have an almost undefeated record of picking the winner in presidential races,” Steve Cortes, a pollster with the League of American Workers, told Restoration News in an interview. “They may be the only true swing voters left in the country and they happen to live in key states as far as the presidency is concerned.
“They are concentrated in all right places,” Cortes added, “and that’s a really good reason to be optimistic about Trump right now, because all the credible polling shows him romping among Catholics.”
Cortes’ latest battleground polling for the populist conservative site American Greatness show Trump leading Vice President Kamala Harris 20 points among Pennsylvania Catholics, 58%–38%.
Overall, Cortes finds Trump leading Harris by 1 percentage point in Pennsylvania, 49%–48%.
Cortes is also eyeballing Georgia where an American Greatness poll has Trump up 49%–48% in a head-to-head matchup with Harris. But as in Pennsylvania, Trump is pulling away from Harris among Georgia Catholics.
“Georgia is a lot more Catholic than people think because so many people have moved there,” he said. “The Archdiocese of Atlanta has something like a million Catholics.”
But Cortes does have a few caveats when it comes to the Catholic vote. He points out, for example, that has historically been subdivisions between church-attending and non-church-attending Catholics, as well as those Catholics who do not necessarily vote in line with official Church teachings.
“You have to be careful when you’re talking about the Catholic vote, because you have to ask yourself if they are really voting as Catholics,” Cortes said. “They might identify as Catholic, but that’s not necessarily driving their vote. There is a lot of crossover between Catholics and what I call ‘working class people.’”
Cortes defines “working class” broadly as people without college degrees who are motivated by a mix of economic and cultural factors. The fact that Trump lost ground in 2020 relative to his 2016 performance among working class voters, and by extension some Catholics, is one reason Cortes believes Trump lost that reelection bid.
In 2016, Trump won the Catholic vote by a decisive margin over Hillary Clinton; but in 2020 he was evenly split with the Catholic “Scranton Joe” Biden.
Flash forward to 2024 and Trump’s race against the ultraliberal Kamala Harris, and polling from the National Catholic Reporter shows Trump building sizable leads over Harris among Catholics in several swing states not just in Pennsylvania, but also in Wisconsin where Trump is up against Harris by 18 percentage points among Catholics and in Michigan where Catholics prefer Trump by a 12 point margin.
(RELATED: Expect Freedom of Worship To Die Under Kamala Harris' War On Religion)
The Urban vs. Suburban Catholic Divide
Steve Wagner, a volunteer with Catholic Vote, a nonprofit group that advocates on behalf of Catholic teachings, expects Trump to win the Catholic vote. But he also sees some new trendlines that give cause for concern.
Instead of the traditional split between Catholics who attend mass and those who don’t, Wagner sees a wedge between urban and suburban Catholics.
“What we’re seeing now is very little difference between religiously active and inactive Catholic voters,” he said. “What we are seeing is the emergence of urban Catholics, even mass-attending urban Catholics, defying the trend toward more conservative, Republican, and pro-life habits of voting.
“This is an interesting trend that has not been adequately probed,” Wagner added. “I think we need to update our thesis since we can no longer talk about mass-attending Catholics as a distinct constituency. Now we need to parse out urban and non-urban mass attending Catholics [because] urban Catholics are not less likely to attend mass than suburban Catholics.”
Wagner finds that urban Catholics are more likely to vote for Democrats regardless of whether they regularly attend mass or not. That complicates things for the GOP.
“What this means in the current election cycle, is there is not as much of a difference between religious active Catholic voters, and religiously inactive Catholic voters,” Wagner said. “What this means is that the likelihood of mass-attending Catholics voting for Trump is not as it might have been in a previous time because of the emergence of urban Catholics.”
(MORE: Kamala’s Father Knew Mass Immigration Hurts Black Families. She Should've Listened to Him.)
Globalism or the American Way?
Still, Catholic Vote president Brian Burch believes Trump’s appeal among working class Catholic voters goes far beyond economics. “It’s not just about the pocketbook per se, although that’s certainly a motive. There’s a desire for meaningful jobs in small towns that have been hollowed out by the global economy,” Burch explained.
“But there’s also the question of living a meaningful life in a society where your work and your family inside of your community is represented and substantiated.”
Burch sees the objective of the radical Left guiding the Democratic Party as “eviscerating” essential institutions like the family and the church, which provide people with meaning.
“There’s a reason why people are anxious, lonely, taking antidepressants and committing suicide at higher rates,” Burch laments. “Our politicians have contributed to this epidemic of loneliness.
“When you’re being told that getting married and having children is the worst thing you can do, and that you’re just a cog in the wheel of a corporation based overseas, and that you’re there to serve the elites and a globalist empire, that’s a problem.”
No presidential nominee in U.S. history better exemplifies that cynical secularism than San Francisco’s Kamala Harris, who’s snubbed Catholic voters on the 2024 campaign trail.
Harris’s decision earlier this week to skip out on the annual Al Smith Foundation dinner—which raises funds for Catholic charities each year—in New York City fits into a larger pattern, Burch suggests, that isn’t lost on Catholic voters.
“Increasingly, the Left is very open about the way it views the Catholic Church. It is the one institution that stands in the way of their larger ideological goals, which is to destroy the social fabric based upon traditional moral beliefs,” Burch explained.
Where Harris is concerned, Wagner finds there is no room for pretending. If elected, he anticipates that Harris would move against Catholic institutions and work to block Catholics from public service.
“She really believes there should be no kids outside of a public school, and she would close Catholic schools if she could,” Wagner said. “Harris also does not believe in the right of conscience for health care providers. She would force Catholic doctors and nurses to perform abortions, and genital mutilations and anything else she is keen on.”
Wagner also said Catholics should be mindful of the fact while serving as a U.S. Senator, Harris worked to block a judicial nominee to the federal bench because he belonged to the Knights of Columbus, a Catholic organization.
While Catholics who support Trump should be encouraged by the latest polling, Steve Cortes warns that the so-called “nones”—younger voters who identify as atheist, agnostic, or irreligious—are lining up against Trump.
“The nones used to be a small group,” but not now Cortes said. “They are growing and it’s one reason Trump is losing among young people. The numbers there are foreboding.”
But in this current election cycle, Burch points to the overt animosity that Harris and other leftist politicians have shown toward Catholics as critical for driving the Catholic vote toward Trump in key states. Burch is convinced that whatever truce may have existed at one time between Catholics and leftists who object to Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular is now over.
“I think Christian people, regardless of what Church they attend, know they are at risk because the Left isn’t content with the idea of different strokes for different folks, and all of us living together,” Burch said. “Instead, they’re interested in destroying us and our way of life.”
If Trump can convince enough Catholics, and working class voters, that he cares about them and identifies with their concerns, Burch anticipates that the former Republican president will become the next Republican president.
(READ MORE: Kamala Harris is the Most Racist Presidential Nominee Since Woodrow Wilson)