Posted on 11/11/2006 1:41:23 PM PST by Sabramerican
Catholic Vote Swings Democratic in Midterm Elections By Jeff Diamant Religion News Service
Catholics, who compose a massive 67 million-person slice of the electorate, favored Democrats in Tuesday's election by 55 percent to 45 percent, according to National Election Pool exit polls.
That's a marked difference from 2004, when President Bush, a Republican United Methodist, won 52 percent of the Catholic vote and Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., a Catholic, received 47 percent.
Catholic voting patterns varied by state, but the overall shift helped Democrats in several big states like Pennsylvania and Ohio, according to John Green, a senior fellow at Washington's Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.
For much of the 20th century, American Catholics were loyal Democrats, but in recent elections their voting patterns have been largely indistinguishable from the general population.
And for the last quarter-century, conservative Catholics and white evangelicals have increasingly voted Republican, making opposition to abortion and same-sex marriage their top political issues.
Yet since the 2004 presidential election, liberal religious groups have worked to get the Catholic vote back to the Democratic Party, using the issues of poverty, health care and environmentalism as ways to get voters' attention. A liberal group called Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good credits those efforts for the shifts reflected in Tuesday's voting.
Green says the shift is harder to explain.
"It could be that many Catholics that had voted Republican in the past were not real happy with that vote," he said. "And it's entirely plausible that efforts by religious progressives did move some Catholics to vote Democratic."
For years, polls have shown that people who attend religious services at least once a week are more likely to vote Republican, and people who attend infrequently are more likely to vote for Democrats. Democrats did better this year with both groups than in 2004.
The Rev. Tony Campolo, a liberal evangelist and professor emeritus at Eastern University in Pennsylvania, says that since 2004, when Kerry was widely perceived as uncomfortable talking about his faith, Democratic candidates have tried harder to attract religious voters.
"Democrats have learned that when you want to speak to the religious community, you can't do it simply by saying `I went to church when I was a kid,' or quote a few Bible verses in your speech," Campolo said. "What you have to do," he said, is convince people who are religious that one's views "on things like torture, on things like war, on things like poverty, emerge out of your spiritual convictions."
White evangelicals, who have collectively voted Republican since the 1980s, had been widely expected to sit out the election because of anger over sex scandals and the war in Iraq. But polling indicates they voted in full force, and that Republicans came away with a healthy 70 percent of their votes, down only 8 percentage points from what they gave President Bush in 2004.
Jewish voters, longtime Democratic loyalists as a group, gave congressional Democrats nationwide 87 percent of their vote.
Unfortunately, like many Catholics, abortion is not a priority for Jews when they are voting. I could be wrong, but I think that Jews have always been a pro-abortion demographic. Jews that I know are ravenously "pro-choice".
I know many Catholics that are into the "peace and justice" thing, which strangely adds up to a pro-abortion vote. Like their Jewish counterparts, I believe these people are more secular than they are religious.
Evangelicals seem to get it right,...or at least I have not heard otherwise.
I don't doubt this tells the story of why the Democrats won the Congress (and will win the WH in 2008) if the Catholics don't change their votes. It is sad that the majority of Catholics and even greater majority of Jews voted for men and women who support oppressing the weak and letting the predators get stronger. Of course they won't agree with the history occurring with their votes ...
And I respectfully continue to wish that more Catholics, Other Orthodox, Protestants, Evangelicals, and Pentecostals all gave the Logos of God it's proper standing and held much more to it, whatever else "religious leaders" say.
I am still puzzled that any Catholic voter could vote RAT, for the same reason.
The liberal but beloved Mrs. JimRed is against abortion yet supports most RAT candidates. I brought the inconsistency up and she said that not all liberals support "choice". I challenged her to start talking against abortion among her lib friends; she said she does not discuss politics because it starts disagreements.
She's been propagandized since youth, been a nun and a teacher and cannot see the logic in conservatism.
"A Pew exit poll indicated that many independents felt they voted against George Bush by voting Democratic."
Enough!!! They didn't vote Democratic. They voted the issues and didn't vote for a candidate at all.
A no vote was a vote for a Democrat.
As a student of a Catholic high school, the Sisters of Loretta taught me, I am pleased to be at an institution of higher education with such strong and celebrated Catholic and Jesuit traditions . . . You see, I got my Master's Degree at Notre Dame. (Boos.) I acquired a passion for the fighting Irish . . . and my family has been college educated and Presbyterian ever since. (Laughter and applause.) . . . I wandered into a course on international politics taught by a Czech refugee who specialized in Soviet studies, a man who had a daughter by the name of Madeleine Albright. With that one class, I was hooked. I discovered that my passion was Russia and all things Russian.
I voted a straight Republican ballot, BTW. Apparently, many Buchananites and Mel worshippers did not.
Bush a RINO? Remember the Republican being a majority is in name in only. We had a Senate that was split down the middle with the Democrats. We didn't have a great majority in the House either. Nothing got done because the Democrats got in the way. I wanted Social Security Reform but the Democrats did not like the idea. It's not Bush's fault if Democrats prevent laws to protect our Borders or a full scale war in Iraq. Before Bush got into office the military was downsized significantly by the Clinton Administration.
Bush Administration had to deal with the military that was given to him.
Why didn't the Republicans in the House and Senate have the balls to counterattack the Democrats? The Republicans did a wonderful job not speaking up during the recent Senate Intelligence Report.
Republicans are in a predictment.
My Congressman Mark Kirk from Illinois must be a RINO too. We have our Naval Base here in Great Lakes, Illinois. He has to keep all the retirees happy, the civilian contractors who are working on the base happy and people who live on welfare happy. Lake County used to be a Red but its quickly turning Blue. All our Republicans are being voted out except for Kirk. His democrat opponent nearly won but missed it by 1%. Pretty soon Kirk will lose his congressional seat to a Democrat. My husband hates Kirk because he's a RINO but I only look at his situation trying to please everyone so you can get your job done...like supporting Bush on WOT.
Did Bush have any successes?
Bush changed the bankruptcy laws...that's not good enough for you conservatives? He was able to get that bill passed with bi-partisan approval.
http://www.newstarget.com/010162.html
He also signed into law Healthy Forest Restoration Act in 2003 with bi-partisan approval. We can clear cut forest for safety reason now and we don't have to listen to silly environmentalist who prefer having our forest as tinder boxes.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/12/20031203-4.html
"The only thing I support Bush on is the war on terror and I have my problems with some of his actions in regards to this."
It's because he has the silly Democrats and mainstream media nipping at his heels about Gitmo and trying to bring about another My Lai Massacre on front page news. We can't be aggressive against the terrorist because Democrats won't allow it.
If everyone was on board; this conflict would been wrapped up quickly but the Democrats are too blame. They prolonged our intervention in Iraq by saying the US was wrong to go in from the get go. They have embolden the Saddamites and Jihadist.
All the recent "civil war" in Iraq is being done by the Iranians, Syranians and Jihadist who are sneaking over the border. Iraqis don't have much faith in the Americans because we will leave them just like how we left the South Vietnamese. So the civil war is the byproduct of Democrats ranting about cutting and running. We will do this because the average American does not have the patience anymore and prefer to watch American Idol.
Let the Democrats have the ball in their court. Let's see how smart they are with their great plans and deal with this complex terrorism issue. No one has a perfect plan and I'm sure WWII had many failures but people sticked together through thick and thin.
We can't do that anymore as a nation and we have barbarians at our gates.
The only reason the Democrats won this mid-term they went around disguising themselves as Reagan Democrats. The independent voters took the bait.
I don't think the voters will be happy with Bait and switch politics.
You have your opinion of his job performance and I have mine. I stick by what I said. You can believe as you desire.
What is the threat, and what do you mean when you refer to "taming" it?
This one did, too!
True, very true.
Disgraceful, isn't it.
"Religious progressives" huh? What is wrong with this picture? Don't voters have a clue what a "progressive" is? I am stunned by this Catholic vote to be honest.
Good point. We're talking here about faithful Catholics, formed in the values the Church teaches--not the "I'm a conservative Catholic" Nancy Pelosis.
Many of these people realize that their values were not nearly as important to President Bush and the GOP Congress as their votes were at election time. It's true that we got two good SC justices out of President Bush in the past couple years, but we very nearly got Harriet Miers. A serious pro-life justice was an afterthought. The effort to affirm traditional marriage was a political joke. Then the GOP Congress came close to forcing government funding for destroying human embryos.
In truth, it is much more likely that the Dems will end the war and/or the death penalty than it was that the GOP would end abortion, or even take serious steps in that direction.
Same with Catholics. I'm not allowed to judge other people's standing with God, but I don't see how one can be a good Catholic and vote for the abortion party.
Yeah, just as fake Catholics abound now we have liberals claiming to be Evangelicals. You can't assume anything when you see that label -- have to read between the lines to find out who they're talking about.
Then we have to continue to work to raise their conciousness. Catholics know abortion is anathema, no matter how bad their catechesis.
Yeah... he has done a lot of good things, but the persistent sense that he's not listening to the people about stopping the influx of illegals, and steamrollering Iraq until the war is won has really, really pissed a lot of people off. I can't say he's doing the things that are necessary to protect THIS COUNTRY.
Still, I voted R. Wasn't really any choice.
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