The 2012 Catholic Vote: An Early Assessment (breakdown by state)

The Catholic Thing ^ | November 19, 2012 | George J. Marlin

[NYer]

I live in Long Island and in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy my home was without electricity, heat or lights for 14 days, 2 hours, and 30 minutes.  Sitting in the dark every night shivering in my living room (which hit a low of 49 degrees), I had plenty of time to brood over the disastrous 2012 election results, the way Catholics voted in particular, and why it happened.

Here’s what I came up with:

GOP internal tracking polls that had Romney winning were wrong because pollsters could not factor into their mathematical formulas the effectiveness of Obama’s Election Day ground operation. Obama people may be awful at governing, but they excel at mobilizing turnout.

Leftist community organizers, often financed by our tax dollars, have been fine tuning their “get out the vote” techniques since the mid-1960s.  And during the past four years, they went beyond identifying voting blocs by zip codes or neighborhoods. They actually compiled dossiers on millions of individuals who were sympathetic to their agenda and personalized messages designed to push their political hot buttons.

Obama’s Chicago gang focused on turning out pro-abortion single women, Latinos, African-Americans, and recipients of government welfare programs – and keeping home 2008 Obama supporters who were leaning against him this year—particularly blue-collar Catholics.

The disenchanted were inundated with campaign propaganda that painted Romney as an out of touch plutocrat who would be a worse president than Obama.  The success of this voter suppression strategy explains why Obama was the first re-elected president to receive fewer votes than in his first election.

As for the Catholic vote, utilizing currently available data (which is still not complete), I’ve compiled the following chart that compares votes cast by Catholics in the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections in a dozen or so states where exit polling was done and actually allows us to make such comparisons. (Though you will see exit polls reported on by various news outlets, basically all of them were conducted by Edison Media Research, which supplied the results broken down below.)

 

		2008 Generic Catholic Vote		2012 Generic Catholic Vote		Catholic Vote
State	% of Catholics	McCain %	Obama %	Romney %	Obama %	Romney 2012 vs. McCain 2008
AZ	23	49	49	50	50	+1
CA	28	37	58	38	62	+1
CT	48	50	46	49	51	-1
FL	28	49	50	52	47	+3
IA	23	41	50	52	47	+11
ME	26	37	61	41	56	+4
MI	29	46	51	55	44	+9
NV	25	42	57	46	51	+4
NH	38	50	50	54	46	+4
NJ	44	55	45	43	45	-1
NM	32	29	69	32	64	+3
NY	42	41	59	53	47	+12
NC	9	N/A	N/A	66	34	--
OH	26	52	47	55	44	+3
PA	35	52	48	50	49	-2
VA	15	N/A	N/A	55	45	--
WI	32	47	53	56	44	+9

 

As is clear, in most state results there was a slight shift in the Catholic vote towards Mitt Romney, but quite a large movement to the Republican candidate in Iowa, Michigan, New York, and Wisconsin – all battleground states with the exception of New York. The worst change for Republicans was in Pennsylvania, which registered a 2 percent increase in Catholic votes for the Democrat incumbent, President Obama.

Nationwide, in 2008, Senator McCain received 45 percent of the generic Catholic vote, 52 percent of church-going Catholics, 53 percent of White Catholics, and 32 percent of Hispanics.  Governor Romney received 48 percent of the generic Catholic vote, 57 percent of Church attendees, 52 percent of cafeteria Catholics, 59 percent of white Catholics, and 27 percent of Hispanics.

While white Catholic support for the Republican nominee was higher than McCain’s in 2008, turnout was not enough in the battleground states of Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Ohio to put them into the GOP Electoral College column.  On the other hand, the Hispanic vote increased by about 9 million over 2008 totals.  This helped put Obama over the top in the tightly contested states of Florida, Nevada, and Colorado.

In my next column for The Catholic Thing, I will try to provide a broader analysis of the impact of Catholic voter turnout in key swing states, which is a more complex phenomenon than has been recognized to date. For now, it’s worth noting the curious fact that most news outlets have not made much of an effort to dig into the Catholic results.  In several ways, Catholic voters were trending back a bit towards Catholic values, but how, why – and in many cases, why not – will occupy us in our next.

[NYer]

Here again, some very interesting statistics.

[NYer]

Here again, some very interesting statistics.

[mc5cents]

CINOs!!!!! A practicing Catholic cannot in good conscience vote for a democrat. The Democrat party is the party of abortion and gay sex.

[Donnafrflorida]

Not a single Believer of any denomonation could.

[Varda]

Interesting. Where I live PA Catholics are pretty left wing (almost zero Hispanics, this is union country) Our priest campaigned for Obamacare from the pulpit and the pro-life group equates anti-death penalty with anti-abortion (yes, there are lots of busses to the March for Life every year). One reason we moved to this more conservative area because our former Diocese quoted Karl Marx in their explanations for tuition increases at Catholic schools. Things are getting better slowly but it will be a long time before conservative Catholics are as comfortable as leftist ones.

I take solace in that it appears nearly everywhere else is better.

[jjotto]

I can tell you with certainty that Iowa Catholics did not vote majority Romney. That calls into question all of the numbers cited.

[D-fendr]

The Mainstream Protestants are breaking apart, teaching contrary to Christ, and much of the rest of protestantism is isolated individuals, megachurch/Olsteen, “prosperity gospel,” Benny Hinn, etc. The Southern Baptist vote conservative, but aren’t exactly known for their high minority membership.

The Church remains whole and correct in Her teaching. We have work to do, but there is reason for hope.

[Venturer]

CINOs!!!!! A practicing Catholic cannot in good conscience vote for a democrat. The Democrat party is the party of abortion and gay sex.

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
These people come to Church, They are not practicing Catholics.I don’t know why they come.

The Democrat party is their religion.

[DrC]

“Obama people may be awful at governing, but they excel at mobilizing turnout.”

If progressives were as skilled at governing as mobilizing turnout, things like Obamacare might be workable. Unfortunately, they are not and never will be. Worse still, they don’t recognize their ineptitude when it comes to governing. They are convinced that public opposition to Obamacare is grounded in public ignorance rather than public recognition that the government is unlikely to do a better job at running health care than it has done running the Post Office or Amtrak.

[sickoflibs]

GOP internal tracking polls that had Romney winning were wrong because pollsters could not factor into their mathematical formulas the effectiveness of Obama’s Election Day ground operation. Obama people may be awful at governing, but they excel at mobilizing turnout.
Leftist community organizers, often financed by our tax dollars, have been fine tuning their “get out the vote” techniques since the mid-1960s. And during the past four years, they went beyond identifying voting blocs by zip codes or neighborhoods. They actually compiled dossiers on millions of individuals who were sympathetic to their agenda and personalized messages designed to push their political hot buttons.
Obama’s Chicago gang focused on turning out pro-abortion single women, Latinos, African-Americans, and recipients of government welfare programs – and keeping home 2008 Obama supporters who were leaning against him this year—particularly blue-collar Catholics.
The disenchanted were inundated with campaign propaganda that painted Romney as an out of touch plutocrat who would be a worse president than Obama. The success of this voter suppression strategy explains why Obama was the first re-elected president to receive fewer votes than in his first election

Looks like those polls showing Obama ahead were NOT oversampling Dem voters after all.

Romney didn't do this, targeting specific R leaning voters and getting them out by hitting their hot buttons, at least not effectively. Hell, he was winning big on tax cuts (and regulations) so why would he need to do this?

[NYer]

A practicing Catholic cannot in good conscience vote for a democrat.

What about practicing protestants?

[annalex]

From the Catholic perspective both McCain and Romney were horrible candidates: both were just barely prolife, never articulated their views on pro-life issues of the day,— abortion and the state pandering to the gays, — none spoke of their faith at all, and Romney was not even Christian. McCain supported the bailouts and Romney invented his own version of Obamacare. both were just barely right of center big business candidates with few connection points to the Catholic political culture.

[G Larry]

Until we address the organized fraud and gather the courage to fix it, in spite of the charges of “racism”, we can expect to lose.

[ScottinVA]

The Democrat party is their religion.

Very close to how I see it.......

1. Government is their god.

2. Liberalism is their religion.

3. The Democrat Party is their church.

4. Secularism and Socialism are their twin doctrines.

5. Marx, Lenin, Stalin and Obama are their prophets.

6. Abortion, homosexuality and class struggle are their sacraments.

[ScottinVA]

Addendum to my previous: Not Catholics, but liberals.

[Ransomed]

That looks a heck of a lot better than last time, exepting some places, which did worse...NJ,Pa, Ct what happened? Still NY, Pa, Ia, Fla, Oh, Mi, NH, Wis?!! WOW!

This national number of Obama winning with 50% of the vote is useless—we vote by state and the electoral college. How is the 50% number useful when you have splits between states like La and NM, where in La McCain got 70% of the Catholic vote and in NM Obama got 70% of the Catholic vote? The only thing I Can think of that is throwing everything off is Cali, huge number of Catholics in Cali must be affecting the % of Catholics without regard to the electoral college.

I am SHOCKED that NY Catholics went with Romney. Last time Obama got 60%. The only really big state that I am still curious about is Texas, that would be interesting.

Freegards, thanks for the awesome pings on FR

[Texas Fossil]

See no clear conclusion from the posted data.

My observation over time is: those whose church operates by top down direction generally accept statist government without questioning and those who are bottom up generally resist a compulsive state.

FEW of my Baptist Bretheren vote Dem, those who do are operating from a perspective of the past not current government.

[matginzac]

You know the Mooslims wouldn’t.....

[Buckeye McFrog]

The Catholic Bishops in Pennsylvania chose to sit this one out IMHO. They delivered vague, mealy-mouthed incomprehensible instructions to the flock which were basically interpreted as “vote whichever way you were intending to anyway”.

They apparently chose not to antagonize Hispanics and union members, causing a drop in collection basket receipts. Plus we had so many lay ministers, choir directors, etc. driving around with Obama bumper stickers.