How will US Catholics Vote Today?

Today, US voters go to the polls to elect their new president. DENNIS SADOWSKI surveys what role the “Catholic vote” plays.

Is there such a thing as a Catholic vote in the United States? Well, yes. Kind of.

Voting patterns show Catholics vote much like the rest of America, with minor swings one way or the other, depending on the candidate and the state.

Nevertheless, the Catholic vote still is important. But in any way it’s examined, analysts say the Catholic vote — about 22% of the electorate — is not as monolithic as it once was.

That is, except for Latinos, who now comprise about 35% of US Catholics. More than 65% of that group regularly vote for Democrats, and about 20% vote Republican, leaving few to be swayed by the candidates’ political positions.

“Even though people use the shorthand of ‘the Catholic Vote’, ‘the Vote of Catholics’ is probably the better way to describe it, because there is that diversity now,” said Mark Gray, senior research associate at the Washington-based Centre for Applied Research in the Apostolate. Dr Gray suggested that the elections of 1960 and 1964 were the last where Catholics could be considered a uniform voting bloc.

In 1960, they were moved to support Democrat John F Kennedy, the country’s first and only Catholic president, and that wave carried into the election four years later, when Kennedy’s successor, Lyndon Johnson, was elected.

But since then, Dr Gray said, Catholics “have not been really in one camp or the other”, and they hold values similar to the rest of the voting populace — an indication that Church teaching holds little sway in the election at the polls.

Catholics “look for teachings of the Church that are consistent with the party affiliation that they have”, Dr Gray said.

Monika McDermott, associate professor of political science at New York’s Jesuit Fordham University, echoed Mr Gray, saying the diversity among Catholics means they vote the way they want, no matter what the Catholic Church teaches.

“They go their own way. They pick and choose what they want and what they want to follow,” she said. So there’s no need to expect that Catholics by themselves will sway the eventual outcome of this year’s presidential election, with its strange twists as candidates trade extraordinarily nasty barbs and accuse major party leadership of a lack of transparency in the delegate selection process.

Factors such as anger and distrust among voters are fuelling the rise of self-proclaimed “outsiders” whose message has appealed to those who have felt betrayed by the institutions of government, Church and social services that they once trusted to work on their behalf.

Stephen Schneck, director of the Institute for Policy Research & Catholic Studies at the Catholic University of America, said perhaps no other group has felt more betrayed than white working-class communities in places such as Pennsylvania, Appalachia, the Ozarks and the Deep South.

Addressing a symposium at the university in April, Dr Schneck described the high levels of drug abuse and alcoholism, marriage failures, declining life expectancy and rising crime rates that plague such communities.

“There are many angles from which to consider the correlation between decaying social capital and what’s happening to the quality of life for these populations, but one way to see it is as a crisis of trust,” Dr Schneck observed.

“It’s a breakdown of trust with even basic institutions of social life. Their distrust of government is something we all hear about, but it goes far beyond that,” he said. In an interview with Catholic News Service, Dr Schneck said working-class whites in the US feel “like they’ve lived up to their end of the bargain, but the other institutions have not”, so they are turning to candidates who seem to offer them a better life.

Matthew Green, assistant professor of political scientist at the Catholic University of America, said that this could explain the appeal of candidates who have positioned themselves as outside the political mainstream.

Prof Green said the high turnout in the Republican primaries among people feeling forgotten helped Donald Trump hold off challengers.

“If you distrust the institution, but there is a candidate who says ‘I’m going to fix things’, then that might motivate you to vote.”

But even with the large turnout among working-class white voters during the primaries, Latinos may hold a key to the general election.

If they show up at the polls in places such as Florida, Nevada and Colorado, they will influence who becomes the next occupant of the White House, said  Luis Fraga, co-director of the Institute for Latino Studies and professor of political science at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana.

Because of the fast growth of Hispanics who are US citizens, the Latino vote will increasingly influence election outcomes in the future, he said.

In June, the Public Religion Research Institute released results of a survey that revealed that “white [non-Hispanic] Catholic and Latino Catholics are in different universes” when it comes to issues that are important to them in the presidential election.

One of the most important ones for Latino Catholics is immigration, an issue that Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton has used to attack Mr Trump.

In a recent poll among Hispanic Catholic registered voters, Mrs Clinton has 69% support to Mr Trump’s 15%.

How prominent a role have life issues — abortion but also capital punishment and assisted suicide – really played in the 2016 presidential elections?

“It’s about personality, mostly,” said Massimo Faggioli, a professor of theology and religious studies at Villanova University.

He called the presidential campaign “morally confusing. The voice of the values voters, especially on abortion, is not as important as it used to be.”

John Gehring, Catholic programme director at Faith in Public Life, an advocacy group in Washington, said: “Trump is struggling with Catholic voters for a reason: Anti-immigrant nativism, crude sexism and making an idol of wealth are not Gospel values. Pope Francis reminds us that building a culture of life isn’t about a single issue and that everything is connected. Catholics also want to hear about creating an economy of inclusion, dignity for refugees and addressing the way climate change disproportionately hurts the poor. These are central life issues.”

However, Gail Buckley, president of Catholic Scripture Study International, said that she does not trust Mrs Clinton and “would never support a candidate who promotes abortion and same-sex marriage and threatens my religious liberty”.

She will vote for Mr Trump. “I think his comments [on treating women] are utterly disgusting, but I have no other choice than to vote for him,” she said.

Whichever way Catholics vote, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops has again disseminated its document “Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship”, first issued in 2007 and updated for every presidential election.

The document is accompanied by study and discussion guides, bulletin inserts, and materials for use by bishops.

The latest iteration of the document, draws on papal teaching since 2007, particularly the latter part of Pope Benedict XVI’s tenure and that of Pope Francis. It also considers recent developments in US domestic and foreign policy related to same-sex marriage, the use of drones in warfare and care for the environment, among other issues.

“There’s no doubt that this is something that’s very important to bring to the attention of Catholics, and formation of conscience, as the document says, is a lifelong undertaking, and our need to bring our faith to the public square is also not about one election,” said Susan Sullivan, director of education and outreach in the Department of Justice, Peace and Human Development of the US  bishops’ conference.—CNS