By Kate Scanlon
WASHINGTON (OSV News) — Catholic voters are among the key constituencies that candidates are seeking to win in 2024, as surveys and analysts indicate they are on track to be closely divided at the polls.
Catholic voters as a whole have varied in recent presidential elections about which party most of them choose to support. For example, data from the Pew Research Center found that most Catholic voters supported former President Donald Trump in 2016, but more Catholics voted for President Joe Biden in 2020.
Margaret Susan Thompson, an associate professor of history at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship & Public Affairs, who has studied the intersection of religion and politics in the U.S., told OSV News, “We know that Catholics are probably as divided as the rest of the electorate right now.”
“The election is extremely close by almost any standard and Catholics seem to be in many ways mirroring the American population in that regard,” she said.
Polls of the 2024 contest have shown conflicting data about Catholic voters, but also that similar trends are playing out in this constituency compared to the electorate as a whole.
A poll by the Pew Research Center in September found Trump leading Vice President Kamala Harris 52%-47% among Catholic voters. But Pew’s survey differed from an EWTN News/RealClear Opinion Research survey of Catholic U.S. voters conducted Aug. 28-30, which found 50% of Catholic voters said they plan to support Harris for president, while 43% said they planned to support Trump, with another 6% undecided.
Another poll of Catholic voters in seven battleground states — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — by the National Catholic Reporter found these voters favored Trump over Harris 50% to 45%, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2.86%.
But most of those same polls also found partisan gaps widened when divided by demographics such as race and gender. While majorities of white Catholics favored Trump, majorities of Black and Hispanic Catholics said they would support Harris.
Thompson said that the Catholic vote in recent decades has grown less distinct from that of the general electorate, and “Catholics are very representative of the American population these days.”
“I think a lot of Catholics are going to vote for Harris, a lot of Catholics are going to vote for Trump,” she said. “And I don’t know how many of them are going to vote for Harris or Trump because they are Catholic.”
Catholic experts who have spoken with OSV News have alternately drawn points of agreement and tension between the platforms of Harris and Trump with respect to Catholic social teaching, on issues ranging from abortion and in vitro fertilization to immigration to climate and labor.
Pope Francis in September cast the upcoming U.S. election as a choice between the “lesser of two evils,” citing tension with the candidates’ platforms on immigration and abortion as “against life.”
But despite this tension, both campaigns have courted Catholic voters and launched Catholic coalitions. The Trump campaign has on social media made some cultural signals to Catholics, for instance, tweeting the St. Michael prayer. His running mate, Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, is also a convert to Catholicism. Trump and his surrogates have also labeled Harris as anti-Catholic, pointing to her work as a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2018, when she scrutinized the nominations of some potential judges over whether their membership in the “all-male” Knights of Columbus, a Catholic charitable organization, could impact their ability to hear cases “fairly and impartially,” citing the organization’s opposition to abortion.
The Harris campaign, Thompson said, has been less overt in targeting specifically Catholic voters, but is trying “to retain the votes that President Biden received” in 2020. Biden, whom Harris serves under, is the country’s second Catholic president.
“I do think one area where the Catholic Church position may — and I really emphasize ‘may’ not ‘will’ — help the Democrats is on immigration,” she said, arguing that the U.S. bishops have long advocated for humane immigration policy and treatment of migrants, even those bishops who sometimes otherwise appear “generally pretty conservative.”
“And of course, so has the Holy Father,” she added, referring to Pope Francis.
Courting Catholic voters was also on display Oct. 17 at the annual Al Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner, a long-standing white-tie fundraiser benefiting Catholic charities. The dinner has a long tradition of welcoming both major party presidential candidates in election years, where the rivals typically exchange lighthearted jabs at one another. But this year, Harris declined to attend the event, sending a video message in which she praised “the tremendous charitable work of the Catholic Church.”
Thompson said that although Trump was in attendance at the event, his remarks included vulgarities and differed from the traditional format of light humor about the other candidate. For example, in 2008, then Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain teased one another but also offered remarks noting their respect for their rival, with Obama praising the “honor and distinction” of McCain’s military service, and McCain praising the historic nature of Obama’s candidacy and his “skill, energy and determination” to achieve it.
Harris instead spent that evening campaigning in Wisconsin, one of the three Rust Belt states along with Michigan and Pennsylvania that are seen as key battlegrounds in 2024.
Of those states, Pennsylvania, nicknamed the Keystone State, might live up to its nickname as the key contest in determining whether Trump or Harris secures the 270 Electoral College votes necessary to be elected president. A significant share of that state’s electorate is Catholic.
Micheal Allison, professor and chair of the Department of Political Science at the University of Scranton, said the area has a sizable Catholic population. It includes descendants of “particularly European Catholics who came over 100 years ago, 130 years ago,” and then those whose more recent relatives, or they themselves, immigrated to the area, he said, including “a lot from Latin America.”
Asked about how Biden carried both Catholic voters and Pennsylvania in 2020, Allison told OSV News that Biden was arguably “the right person at the right time,” someone who was seen as “a safe, moderate to conservative Democrat, up against someone who had overseen a pretty rough to worse time, particularly under COVID.”
Exit polling from 2020 found that 30% of Pennsylvania voters that year said they were Catholic. Allison said that shows “Catholic voters are going to show up.”
“I think they’re committed to voting,” he said. But he added that “the Catholic population is dwindling.”
“A lot of Catholics — people (who) are baptized and raised Catholic — don’t attend Mass,” he said. “There’s been some alienation from the Catholic Church. So it’s not entirely always clear what people mean (in polling) when they say they’re Catholic, and they’re filling out exit polling, versus how regularly they attend church.”
Pennsylvania, he said, also has strong union ties, which can impact the voting habits of some who might otherwise be more socially conservative.
Thompson added that Catholics, like many voters, likely “have their positions pretty well solidified by now,” but pointed to controversial remarks at an Oct. 27 Trump rally at Madison Square Garden that generated headlines after a comedian who spoke there called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage,” among other controversial remarks about Latinos and other groups, as something that could affect how the remaining undecided Catholics ultimately vote.
Noting that “a sizable proportion of that population is Catholic,” Thompson said, “Is that going to persuade an undecided Catholic voter to say, ‘Well, having heard that, I’m definitely going to vote for the Republicans?’ Frankly, I don’t think so.”
Election Day is Nov. 5.
