Expert says Trump victory confirms white Catholics as GOP voting bloc

NEW YORK – While the exact breakdown of the Catholic vote in the 2024 election remains unclear, one expert notes that exit polling data that is available suggests that in future elections, white Catholics can be penciled in as a significant GOP voting bloc.

“White Catholics in every election cycle are becoming an increasingly stronger GOP voting bloc,” Ryan Burge, an associate professor of political science at Eastern Illinois University, told Crux. “I think now we can just assume that the Catholic vote is going to be 60-40, Republican vs. Democrat, and it might even go up from there as things change.”

Burge, who describes himself as a mainline Protestant, spoke with Crux on Nov. 6 after it became clear that former President Donald Trump had secured enough electoral college votes to win the election. So far, multiple exit polls show a significant advantage for Trump with the Catholic vote. NBC gives Trump a 60-37 advantage over Vice President Kamala Harris on that front, and CNN gives him a 56-41 advantage.

In addition to white Catholics, Burge highlighted the apparent shift among Hispanic voters. Nationwide, Trump performed better with Hispanic voters than he did in either 2020 or 2016, and Burge expects that trend to hold for Catholic Hispanic voters, as well.

“One of the things that we’re seeing is the Hispanic vote mattered a whole lot,” Burge said. “I think that they have always been seen as a moderate voting bloc, but voted for Democrats on election day, and I think we saw in 2024 that they’re still a moderate voting bloc, but they’re not necessarily Democratic all of the time.”

Another way to assess the conservative nature of the overall Catholic vote is to analyze the shift in the political leanings of priests over time. Burge said that if you look at survey data of Catholic priests who were ordained in the 1960s and 1970s, you’ll notice that they were evenly split between left, right, and center. Now, the opposite is true. He said survey data on priests who were ordained in the last ten years shows that they’re 80 percent conservative.

“It’s a purification thing that goes on, where we’re being politically purified by what’s coming from the pulpits and the pews in Protestant and Catholic Churches. To stick around means that you’re at least willing to listen to talking points from the other side of the aisle, which we know that people are less and less likely to do now,” Burge said.

“It’s hard to be challenged from the pulpit on the left or the right, and it looks like the Catholic Church is going to be almost exceedingly from the right in the decades to come,” added Burge, who is also the founder of Graphs about religion, a website that analyzes data regarding religion and politics.

The election also showed, he said, that abortion isn’t necessarily a top priority for Catholic voters. That reality is despite the fact that the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops – both in their voting guide and bishops in individual statements – held it as the “pre-eminent priority” of the election.

“To me, that might be the long, lasting legacy of this 2024 election from a religion/politics standpoint,” Burge said. “There were a whole lot of people who walked in the ballot box in places like Florida, like Missouri, who voted for Donald Trump but then voted to enshrine abortion access in the constitution in their state, and so I think for a lot of people that is not a deal breaker.”

“I’ve been saying that over and over and over again with polling data,” he said. “If you look at white evangelicals, none of them say it’s a deal breaker, the issue of abortion.”

Burge said the simple fact of the election, and Trump’s victory when it comes to the Catholic vote, is that Catholics are all over the country and embrace every economic class. Therefore, he said, like non-Catholics, the economy was clearly a top priority for Catholic voters, and that was going to be the case regardless of statements from any local, national or even global Catholic leader, including Pope Francis.

“I think we realize we all live in bubbles, and I think the average Catholic does not hear [Pope Francis] speak on almost anything in an average year. … I think the average Catholic is not taking their guidance from their priest or their pastor, or their bishop, or a cardinal or the pope,” Burge said.

“I think at the end of the day, they vote based on their pocketbook and decide if they’re doing better or worse than they were doing four years ago, and I think a lot of them think they’re doing worse financially,” he said.