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.
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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.”
More on this story by Kevin Mooney at Restoration News here: https://restoration-news.com/will-catholics-pick-the-next-president
