https://www.conservativereview.com/commentary/2016/09/why-catholics-are-dramatically-shifting-to-hillary-clintonHERE'S WHY CATHOLICS ARE DRAMATICALLY SHIFTING TO HILLARY CLINTON OVER DONALD TRUMPBy: Maria Jeffrey | September 04, 2016
The relationship between Donald Trump and Catholic voters hasn’t been smooth sailing. He got into a tiff with Pope Francis over the idea of a Mexican border wall, and his immigration stance isn’t sitting well with the heavily-Catholic Hispanic demographic. But is Trump repulsive enough to make Catholics vote for Hillary Clinton in drastic numbers? According to the new Washington Post-ABC News poll, Clinton leads Trump with Catholic voters 61-34 percent — a 27-point difference. This is the biggest shift of any demographic group in the poll’s findings.
Most conservative Catholics who go to mass at least once a week don’t like Hillary, but Trump has said enough unsavory things to give many of them pause.
Let's put this into perspective:
President Obama won the Catholic vote by just two points in 2012. The Catholic vote has gone to the winner in five out of the last six elections (Al Gore was the exception), but not by wide margins.
Catholics make up 25 percent of the electorate, and “are about as big a voting bloc as non-whites (28 percent) and independents (29 percent),” according to The Washington Post.
This means that “Trump is basically adding 5 to 7 percentage points to Clinton’s overall margin. If 25 percent of the electorate is Catholic, Clinton is currently taking 14 to 15 points worth of that chunk, while Trump is taking 8 or 8.5 points.”
It’s significant that even regular church-going Catholics are supporting Hillary, because the more-observant Catholics tend to vote more conservatively. In 2012, Catholics who attended church weekly voted for Romney, but this year they are supporting Hillary.
Wow. So, why are so many Catholics flocking to Hillary? FiveThirtyEight reports that many Catholics are swinging Democrat because they see it as a vote against Trump, rather than one for Clinton. This is much different than the last election cycle, where less than 10 percent of Catholics voted for Obama because they didn’t like Romney.
While Catholics are flocking to Clinton, evangelical Christians haven’t wavered in their support of Trump. And in trying to diagnose why Catholic voters are migrating left this year, The Washington Post posits that Catholics are upset that Trump had a verbal duel with the pope and that his immigration stance is unpalatable, even to white Catholics.
Dr. Jay Richards, assistant research professor at Catholic University of America and executive editor at The Stream, told Conservative Review: “I don’t think [Trump’s] comments on immigration per se are the problem, though his tone might have a little to do with it. Given the numbers, it’s clear that a number of moderate and conservative Catholics are either swinging to Hillary, or are choosing neither one (there’s a good bit of leftover in the polls when looking at just Hillary v. Trump). What Trump has failed to do is win over many Catholics that would plausibly vote for a GOP candidate. There has been no explicit outreach to Catholics, as there has been with evangelicals. That’s a huge mistake. In contrast, Hillary is clearly trying to woo Catholics. That’s one of the reasons she chose Tim Kaine.
“Trump is not going to win liberal Catholics, but he doesn’t have to. The problem is this: Most conservative Catholics who go to mass at least once a week don’t like Hillary, but Trump has said enough unsavory things to give many of them pause. I know many conservative Catholics who see the race as choosing between two evils, and so they’re choosing neither. What he needs is for many of them to think this: ‘He’s certainly not the candidate I would have picked, but he’s not endorsing intrinsic evils and so he’s preferable to Hillary.’”
Dr. Richards makes a good point: If Trump wanted to woo Catholic voters, first he would court them, and second, not advocate for intrinsic evils from a national debate stage like he did in March, when he insisted the military would follow his orders, even if they were illegal. Positions like this should have affected Trump’s appeal to all Christians, not just Catholics, and so perhaps the Trump campaign’s lack of outreach to Catholics really has hindered his support among them.
As Dr. Richards points out on The Stream, the Clinton ticket won’t “bring in millions of homeschooling, daily-Mass attending Catholics” this election, but “in a tight race, they don’t have to.” Hillary Clinton will have won the votes of liberal and moderate Catholics, and conservative Catholics might choose to stay home or write someone in.
That’s right — Hillary Clinton — the adamantly pro-abortion, left wing, deeply unpopular candidate for president stands to win the Catholic vote by a huge margin. And it could have been so different.
