COMMENTARY: Catholics rendered their verdict decisively on Nov. 5.
Catholics proved to be a strong coalition this election. (photo: Shutterstock)
In the immediate weeks of polling prior to the Nov. 5 presidential election, something curious was happening among evangelical Christian voters that deeply concerned the pro-life movement and advocates of religious freedom.
In past elections, the evangelical vote had been the most dependable for conservative Republican candidates. That vote regularly came out in droves. White evangelicals supported the pro-life candidate by two-thirds or three-quarters or more. They were also reliable activists, canvassing for ballots, handing out literature and volunteering at polls.
For the year 2024, however, those evangelicals seemed down on Donald Trump, or at least less enthusiastic. Their decreased support concerned conservative Catholics worried about what they perceived as a deep, real and unprecedented threat to pro-life gains and religious freedom by Kamala Harris. What would those Catholics do without those evangelicals?
Well, judging from exit polls, those Catholics would respond by voting eagerly and overwhelming for the Republican presidential ticket. They came out so decisively for the ticket of Donald Trump and JD Vance (a Catholic) that they offset any waning numbers from evangelicals.
We will see varying survey numbers on the Catholic vote in coming weeks. They will differ just as varying polling organizations had different estimates predicting the presidency and other contests. But at the moment, the Catholic numbers for Trump are extraordinary.
An NBC News exit poll shows that Catholics preferred Trump-Vance over Harris-Walz by a whopping 58%-40% (with Catholics representing 22% of all voters). Among white Catholics, the margin was 61%-35%. The Washington Post exit poll shows a 56%-41% margin.
The state-by-state margins in pivotal swing states are likewise extraordinary.
According to data collected and posted by the organization Catholic Vote, Catholics in Michigan voted Trump-Vance over Harris-Walz by an astounding 20%. In Pennsylvania, Catholics were likewise decisive for Trump, by 14%. In Wisconsin, it was 16%. In North Carolina, 17%. In Florida, the margin was astounding: 29%.
In states where the Trump margin of victory was only 1%-2%, Catholic ballots made the difference. Brian Burch of Catholic Vote put it this way, “Catholic voters played a decisive role in the historic victory of Donald Trump and J.D. Vance. … These numbers are shocking and could prove to be the largest margin among Catholics in a presidential race in decades.”
That might well be true.
The juxtaposition to previous races is quite striking. In most presidential elections, the overall Catholic vote tends to reflect the general vote. The word “catholic” means “universal,” and the Church in America is also universal in the way it tends to represent the wider voting public. Because Catholics have comprised 20%-30% of the U.S. population for a long time, with Republicans and Democrats and Independents scattered among them, they constitute a natural sample size of the country as a whole. That “Catholic” vote will include both the daily communicant and the person who walks through the parish door only once or twice a year at Christmas or Easter.
A more telling predictor of the vote is religious seriousness (for lack of a better description). The self-identified Catholic who never misses Sunday Mass or goes to daily Mass and tends to be devoutly pro-life on abortion is more likely to vote Republican. Conversely, if the self-identified Catholic who rarely goes to Mass, is largely secular in outlook and supports the “pro-choice” position and the “LGBTQIA+” agenda is more likely to vote Democrat.
In sum, what this means is that, in most elections, the general “Catholic vote” tends to mirror the overall American vote. If the final Catholic vote on Wednesday morning went 53%-47% for candidate X, then candidate X, whether Republican or Democrat, probably won the overall election (though certainly not always). It would also mean than, in 2024, if Trump’s final victory margin over Harris ends up 51%-48%, we would expect the Catholic vote to be roughly the same percentage.
This time, however, was profoundly different. The Catholic vote went for the winner, President-elect Trump, in far stronger numbers. Why? I see several key reasons:
First, a large portion of the Catholic vote in America is Latino. In this election, Trump did terrifically among Latinos. He carried at least 40% of them, perhaps even as high as 45% by some estimates, compared to the low- to mid-30% range in 2020 and 2016. That alone padded the Catholic vote for Trump in 2024.
Second, Catholics who have been concerned about pro-life issues, religious freedom and the moral-cultural-sexual issues, such as the “LGBTQIA+” agenda, same-sex “marriage” and especially the “trans” madness (gender “transitioning,” biological men in women’s sports, locker rooms, bathrooms, etc.), saw the Trump-Vance ticket as their better choice, if not only choice. Sure, like many evangelicals as of late, pro-life Catholics might have been concerned about Donald Trump deemphasizing the abortion issue in 2024, as Trump and Vance emphasized that the issue has been largely turned over to the states following the June 2022 Dobbs decision. But those Catholics also know that Trump in his previous term gave them the three crucial Supreme Court justices (Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett) who gave them Dobbs, which overturned Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey. Very unexpectedly, Trump had turned out to be an outstanding pro-life president. Also under President Trump, the White House wasn’t being illuminated in the colors of the rainbow flag and wasn’t pushing “Pride Month” and all the insanity of the gay-rights and radical gender-ideology agenda.
Conversely, under the Biden administration, that extremist agenda went into hyper speed. Why was President Joe Biden, an old-time Democrat (and a Catholic) who was once more moderate on these issues, embracing them full throttle?
As Biden’s cognitive decline became more evident, Catholics wondered if maybe someone else in the administration had been pushing that toxic agenda. Might it have been Biden’s vice president? Perhaps so. That was a good bet, actually.
That brings me to the third factor influencing the Catholic ballots cast for Trump in 2024, namely: It was a Catholic vote against Vice President Harris and Tim Walz.
In all U.S. history, the nation had never seen a presidential ticket as extreme as Harris and Walz on moral-cultural issues.
For Harris, this was evident in her statements and actions over the last four years as vice president, many of which the Trump campaign turned into TV ads. But haunting Harris even more were her anti-Catholic actions before she became vice president, both in California as an attorney general and in Washington as a senator. In California, she vigorously prosecuted pregnancy centers and hounded David Daleiden for his noble, courageous work exposing the abortion industry’s insidious “fetal parts” business. Most Catholics were horrified at what Daleiden discovered. Harris, however, was horrified at Daleiden. In her moral calculus, Daleiden was the bad guy, not Planned Parenthood. She thus targeted not the baby-parts peddlers but the man who exposed them. In California, Planned Parenthood had no better ally, no fiercer fighter, than Kamala Harris.
In Washington, on the Senate Judiciary Committee, a hostile Harris shocked everyone with her treatment of Catholic judicial nominees such as Judge Brian Buescher simply for being a member of the Knights of Columbus. Sen. Harris doubted if Buescher was fit to serve on the U.S. District Court in Nebraska, given that he belonged to what she viewed as this enigmatic, dogmatic “anti-choice” organization, which she disparagingly described as “an all-male society comprised primarily of Catholic men.”
Throughout the 2024 campaign, candidate Harris made clear that nothing impassions her like abortion. Abortion seemed to be in every ad. Guys watching football games on Sunday afternoons were assaulted with Harris-Walz ads on abortion repeatedly shoved at them. She was obsessed with the issue. It was telling that in her otherwise-gracious concession speech at Howard University on Nov. 6, Harris once again paused to underscore her all-consuming “dreams, ambitions and aspirations” of “the women of America hav[ing] the freedom to make decisions about their own body.”
I don’t know where Harris’ career goes from here, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see her ending up as president not of the United States of America but of Planned Parenthood. That’s where her heart lies. And so many Catholics found it disconcerting, if not appalling.
Catholics likewise were offended by Harris’ lack of meaningful outreach to them. In an incredibly dumb move, she declined to attend the annual Al Smith Dinner in New York City. Even Hillary Clinton in 2016 knew better than to do that. Clinton attended and was seen breaking bread and laughing and smiling with her archrival Trump. Trump’s biggest laugh at the 2024 dinner came when he quipped that Harris couldn’t make it because she was in Michigan receiving communion from Catholic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (itself another slight of faithful Catholics during the 2024 campaign season).
That action and others were denounced by some Catholics as a “snub” and example of Harris’ hostility toward them. The Catholic League’s Bill Donohue said that Harris throughout the campaign demonstrated a “clear animus against Catholics.”
As for Harris’ running mate, Walz is an ex-Catholic who hardly helped Harris with faithful Catholics. He’s arguably to the left of Harris on moral-cultural issues. In fact, that was why Harris liked and picked Walz. It certainly wasn’t because she felt she needed him to win Minnesota. Had she wanted a more moderate running mate to help her win a crucial swing state, she would have picked Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro. Everyone was stunned when Harris, that August day in Philadelphia, passed over Shapiro for the unknown Walz. It made no sense electorally. It only made sense ideologically. She picked a radical ideological soulmate.
For those reasons and more, millions of Catholics rallied to Trump and against Harris. Sure, there were other, more conventional political-policy reasons, including the chief factor cited by Americans generally in preferring Trump: the economy. There was also foreign policy. In my home state of Pennsylvania, blue-collar Catholic guys were driven to Trump and away from Harris over issues like fracking.
Finally, I must emphasize one particularly positive factor in Trump’s favor that increasingly stood out for many faithful Catholics after July 13, 2024 — yes, since the shooting of Trump that occurred that day in my hometown of Butler, Pennsylvania. That day, and seemingly every day and rally since, Donald Trump publicly, repeatedly, credited God with sparing his life. He is convinced that Providence saved him. The man clearly was deeply affected and humbled. No, he had never been one for humility. A brush with death, however, will change a man.
Trump and his family openly credited God and even guardian angels with his survival. He stunned everyone by issuing a statement on his social-media platforms on the archangels’ feast day, invoking the protection of St. Michael the Archangel. Just a few days before the election, he issued a nice statement for All Saints’ Day.
Cynics will dismiss these overtures as merely political, as a crass appeal to Catholic voters. I think that’s unwarranted, even uncharitable. The man took a bullet mere centimeters from his skull. That moment surely changed him. Just as he surprisingly became more pro-life over the years, the president-elect might be becoming more personally religious. Catholics have taken notice.
There’s much more that could be said in this analysis of why Catholics turned out so strongly for Trump on Election Day. But, overall, of all the issues animating the Catholics you see in the pews every Sunday, or daily, they saw Trump-Vance as a better bet to protect their religious freedom and on moral matters like the sanctity and dignity of human life, male-female marriage, and sexual-gender sanity than Harris-Walz. And they rendered their verdict decisively on Nov. 5.
Donald Trump, you can thank them for your big win.