Catholic Partisanship and the Presidential Vote in 2012: Testing Alternative Theories

Catholics have long been an important force in American electoral politics. Once a vital and loyal component of the New Deal Democratic coalition, Catholics in recent decades have shifted their political loyalties away from the Democratic Party to more of a partisan equilibrium. Indeed, by 2012, the White Catholic vote had become predominantly Republican, even in a year in which a Democrat was re-elected to the White House, and on balance party identification among these voters showed a slight Republican edge. Only the growing contingent of Latino Catholics kept the national vote of the entire religious community closely balanced. Despite widespread agreement among scholars that the partisan behavior of Catholics has changed, there is much less consensus on the nature of that change, its permanence, and its causes. We review the historic patterns of Catholic partisanship and voting behavior, discuss three major perspectives on electoral change among Catholics, and test these perspectives with data drawn from the 2012 National Survey of Religion and Politics, with a rich battery of religious measures. We find that socioeconomic factors, religious perspectives, and issue preferences among Catholics all influence partisanship and vote choice, reducing any true “distinctiveness” of the “Catholic vote.” *Corresponding author: Lyman A. Kellstedt, 213 Woodboro Drive, West Chicago, IL, 60185 USA, (Kellstedt is retired from Wheaton College), e-mail: [email protected] James L. Guth: Department of Political Science, Furman University, 3300 Poinsett Highway, Greenville, SC, 29613, USA