There is no such thing as “the Catholic vote”

August 18th, 2008 at 09:54am Pat Cunningham

 

More than a few political pundits have an unfortunate tendency to lump certain demographic groups into monoliths for purposes of crafting neat and tidy explanations of election results or forecasts.

They’ll say “women voted for…”  or “evangelicals favored…” or “rural voters were not convinced that…”

Most of this stuff is nonsense, since many demographic groups are sharply divided on political choices among their ranks. If 55 percent of women voters mark their ballots for Candidate A, it’s inaccurate to say women rejected Candidate B.

And so it is with Catholic voters, an important demographic group comprising roughly 20 percent of the American electorate. It’s silly to think of Catholic voters as a political monolith. They’re not even of one mind on some of the teachings of their church — on birth control, for example, or on the ban against women in the priesthood, or priestly celibacy.

Still, I frequently run across punditry that seeks to place Catholic voters in an air-tight basket. To wit, CNN correspondent Ed Henry recently declared that Catholic voters “can tip the balance in a close contest.” That’s rubbish. In a close contest, who’s to say which voters tipped the balance? If Catholic voters are often sharply divided politically, who’s to say they made the difference in a given election? It could have been gays or NASCAR fans or dope-smokers.

The tendency to regard Catholic voters as a monolith is most common with respect to the issue of abortion.  After all, some of the most militant activists in the so-called pro-life movement are Catholics. But that’s misleading.

In a PEW SURVEY conducted last year, 51 percent of American Catholics favored keeping abortion legal in all or most cases.  (A Pew Survey conducted three years earlier SHOWED an even larger majority among young Catholics.) This despite the fact that the Vatican vehemently opposes abortion even in cases of rape or incest.

Clearly, abortion is not necessarily the deciding issue in how the majority of Catholics mark their ballots. Nor can either party claim ownership of the Catholic majority. Eight years ago, Catholics went for Democrat Al Gore over Republican George W. Bush by about 3 percentage points. In 2004, they went for Bush by about 7 percentage points over John Kerry (who, by the way, is himself a Catholic).

So, pay no mind to analysts who tell you that the Catholic vote will make the difference in the November election – especially with regard to the abortion issue.

The Catholic vote doesn’t exist.

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