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To: vbmoneyspender
I take it you haven't followed politics for 40 years. The Irish-Catholic vote formed a principal part of the voting bloc that put Reagan in office. You ever heard of the term 'Reagan Democrat' -- that term applied principally to ethnic Catholics such as the Irish.

As far as Irish-Catholics supporting Democrats 2 to 1, you are just wrong. Clinton took the Irish-Catholic vote by 16 points in 1996 and Bush narrowly lost the Irish-Catholic vote in 2000. See link. In 2004, look for Bush to take the Irish-Catholic vote outright, as Catholics in general, and Irish-Catholics in particular become more and more Republican in their voting patters.

Whooopdedoo! They voted twice for Reagan!

If you do the least bit of study into political patterns in major cities, you can easily tell where the predominantly Irish neighborhoods are without looking into Census statistics - look for majority white precincts that are carried overwhelmingly by Democrats that have lots of Catholic Churches around. Examples - Grays Ferry and Fishtown/Kensington in Philadelphia, Rockaway Park in New York, South Boston in Boston.

The fact is that most other white ethnic groups, like Poles, Germans, and Italians generally can be found voting at a 6-4 or even 8-5 rate for Republicans, while the Irish are the exact opposite, and the Jews are even further left at about 8-2 Democrat.

143 posted on 11/23/2002 3:06:17 PM PST by Hermann the Cherusker
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To: Hermann the Cherusker
Irish Catholics voted for Reagan in 80 and 84 and for Bush Sr in '88 and I believe GW may have even gotten their vote in 2000. It is difficult to say because the polling data I found doesn't breakout Irish Catholic voting percentages from Hispanic voting percentages. In any event, compared to how Irish Catholics used to vote in the '20s or even the '60s, there has been significant shift in favor of the Republicans. I don't see how you can dispute that.

BTW, here is an article from July of this year by Mark Shields (who is about as liberal as they come) which makes the same point with regard to Catholics in general --

Long gone are elections like the Democratic victories of 1960 and 1964, when three out of four Catholics voted for co-religionist John F Kennedy and then nearly four out of five Catholics backed Baptist Lyndon B Johnson.

I would be very interested to see something other than an opinion from you that supports your statement that Irish-Catholics vote 2 to 1 in favor of Democrats. I am quite sure that isn't true, but please feel free to prove me wrong.

145 posted on 11/23/2002 3:36:22 PM PST by vbmoneyspender
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