How Did Trump Win? Don't Overlook the Catholic Vote | Opinion
As Tuesday night transitioned into the start of Wednesday, a sense of déjà vu from 2016 settled in. Like Hillary Clinton , Kamala Harris ' hopes of becoming the first female president crumbled along with the so-called "blue wall" of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan. But there was another reason it felt like 2016 again—an exit poll number.
An initial 2016 exit poll finding that showed 81 percent of white evangelicals backed Donald Trump quickly became perhaps the most-cited number about the state of religion and politics in the United States. On Tuesday night, NBC News released exit poll data with that same number: 81 percent of white evangelicals voted for Trump. (It should be noted that the numbers can move a bit as more data is added; in 2016 it eventually dropped to 80 percent.)
In eight years, the white evangelical vote hasn't really moved. Evangelicals for Harris , Vote Common Good , and the Harris campaign itself spent millions this year trying to reach those voters for the Democratic nominee. Reporters wrote dozens of s exploring the question of whether Harris could win over evangelicals. On Election Day, Charlie Brown again missed the football.
However, it would be a mistake to blame white evangelicals for the electoral shift to Trump. In each of the last three presidential elections, about eight in ten white evangelicals voted for Trump. They've been among his most loyal supporters, and do not therefore explain how Joe Biden won while Harris lost. White evangelicals did not swing this election; this election swung back to where white evangelicals already stood.
Political operatives and commentators are poring over the results to learn how Trump won, noting, for example, his increased support from Latino men. Among religious voters, the key group that helped reverse Trump's fortunes were Catholics.
Biden flipped five states in 2020 with increased support among some key religious demographics: the unaffiliated or "nones," mainline Protestants, and Catholics. Harris slightly increased her support with the nones. Mainline Protestants are difficult to consider in the exit polling since they are not broken out as a separate category (but will be in later election analyses). However, the exit polls do not hint at a major shift among the group.
The religious group that really matters from Tuesday is the Catholic vote. The exit polls four years ago put Biden narrowly winning among Catholics, though later numbers that were probably more accurate had him narrowly losing. Either way, the virtual tie was an important improvement over Clinton's standing in 2016.
Exit polling data on Tuesday shows Harris losing Catholic voters by 18 percentage points. That put her even below Clinton, who at least managed to win the national popular vote. Harris cracking just 40 percent of Catholics as Trump ran up to 58 percent is a huge loss, especially in states with large Catholic populations like Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Harris fell not only among white Catholics but all Catholics, which is probably tied to her losses among Latino men.
Biden's Catholic faith likely explains part of how he overperformed Clinton and Harris with that key demographic. Being a white man may also help explain why Biden fared better. But this year's campaign strategies also should've provided warning signs. Trump picked a convert to Catholicism as his running mate. He made more explicit appeals to Catholic voters than did Harris, clearly recognizing their importance in reversing his electoral fate. He frequently attacked Biden and Harris as anti-Catholic. He even posted Catholic icons and prayers on social media in the waning weeks of the campaign.
The Democratic Party and political analysts will spend the next several weeks and months performing their autopsies of the 2024 election and the Harris campaign's failures. The temptation to blame white evangelicals will remain because of their high support for the former and future president. To truly explain why 2024 looked like 2016 instead of 2020, however, attention must be instead focused on Catholic voters.
Tuesday's results should raise questions outside of news rooms and political headquarters. What does the shift among Catholics portend for congregations and parishes across the country? If a new Trump administration targets refugees and immigrants, will Catholics who have historically worked with those communities repent of their Trump support? Or will they transform into a loyal MAGA bloc like white evangelicals before them?
Brian Kaylor, a minister with a Ph.D. in political communication is co-author of Baptizing America and writes about religion and politics at A Public Witness .
The views expressed in this are the writer's own.
