“They always talk about the Protestant vote”
No “they” don’t. They refer thousands of times to “Evangelical vote.”
What part of “Evangelical” as a subdivision of “Protestant” don’t you get?
The division among Protestants is so clear that everyone (except cherry-pickers like you) take it for granted.
Well, darn it, the same fault lines exist among “Catholics.” The difference is that there’s a veneer of unity—mainly because the bishops refused to excommunicate the CINOs years ago.
When it suits you, you ignore the fault lines. Fine. You are free to do that. But if you want to understand electoral politics, you’d better pay attention.
But you just wanted to slam Santorum by claiming that “Catholics” don’t support him.
Well, Protestants support Romney by a landslide. Protestants are going to give us Romney as the candidate.
It’s all the fault of Protestants.
Pick them cherries.
Voting always has the Protestant category and often has an Evangelical category.
These are all different churches with vastly different ways, from Bible based Christian denominations to lesbian led Priest denominations, that is why over the years it made sense to have a measure for the more conservative Christian denominations, isn't the Catholic church supposed to be one of those? Would you like it if the Episcopalians were pushed over to Catholic instead of shoved in with the Southern Baptists?
The Catholic church is a single church under a single authority, it only includes baptized Catholics in it, Southern Baptists are the second largest church in America, they are independent and don't have a Pope and include people like President Clinton, Al Gore, but do you really want to compare their vote to the Catholic vote?
No the Southern Baptists and others who come under "Protestant" are thrown in with the black 95% Democrat voting churches, the lesbian led Lutheran and Episcopal churches and so on.
Even this pool of generic Evangelicals is a massive pool of various denominations, and are a larger pool than the baptized Catholics.
Bottom line:
The entire total for Protestant America comes out as a Republican voting block, the total for the single, baptized Catholic Church comes out as a Democrat voting block.