That’s my POINT! They identify themselves as non-Catholic Christian, but NOT as a particular denomination (or as non-denominationalist). And they don’t belong to a church. See the Yearbook of the National Council of Churches; the 25% I cite is the sum of all denominations PLUS the total who claim to be non-denominationalist.
“Total church membership reported in the 2011 Yearbook is 145,838,339 members, down 1.05 percent over 2010.”
“1. The Catholic Church, 68,503,456 members, up .57 percent. “
That leaves 77 million non-Catholic Christian church members. Minus 4 million Orthodox, that leaves 73 million. Out of 290 million people 5+ years old, that’s 23% Catholic and 25% Protestant. And about 60-70 million “Christians” who belong to no church.
The point is, that they are Protestants and are counted as such in voting data.
Protestant is a much more inclusive category than the tight one of being a baptized member of the strongly authoritarian, strongly led, Catholic denomination.
A Protestant voter can be someone who not only isn’t a regular church goer, but someone who has never even been in a church, or baptized, but believes in Christ, or who belongs to a gay church, or whatever, yet as a whole, non-catholic Christians, (Protestants) are far to the right of Catholics and are never won by the democrats.
You don't get it, half of America is Protestant, those Christians who don't belong to a church, are Protestants.
There are more than twice as many Protestants as Catholics in America, or republicans would never win an election.