Does hearing about the "Catholic vote" annoy you?

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Yes. Not only is there no unified Catholic voting bloc, there never really has been one.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Yes. Not only is there no unified Catholic voting bloc, there never really has been one.

Why do you hate Catholics?

Saying there is no unified Catholic voting bloc = hating Catholics is quite a stretch of an assumption to make.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

JFK is a special case for obvious reasons but even then there's not a total Catholic bloc. For examples:



The darkest blue counties near the center of that map that clearly stand out are also the most heavily Catholic non-Hispanic counties in Texas...the Hispanic ones of course being the darkest red. Polar opposites.



Staten Island? Long Island?



Wisconsin has basically always been Lutherans (Scandinavians) in the west, Catholics (Germans) in the east. You can see how they broke there. Granted this is probably why JFK won Brown County (Green Bay) and the surrounding areas, but he still only won Brown by less than a point.



There are some pretty obvious areas evidencing a Catholic swing toward JFK, like those counties in the middle around Stearns and Scott. But he still lost almost all of mostly German and more Catholic than the state southern Minnesota, (oddly enough Jackson is the only county he won, which today is one of the LEAST Catholic ones in Minnesota) and got crushed in Redwood and Brown counties. Brown actually voted for Al Smith.

BTW I was originally going to say in the OP "except for 1928" but then remembered even that's not universal, Smith no doubt still got clobbered in the German areas in central Texas for instance. Perhaps with some excepts that still applies well, but if you have to go back to then or pre-McKinely for examples of Catholic bloc voting, well then you can probably see the lack of relevance today.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

WHat I'm wondering is why you spent a few hours researching this to make a point that really doesn't need to be made.  I mean really, are you losing sleep over this BRTD?

A few hours? Try more like 5-10 minutes. The link to those maps is right at the top of the page you're looking at right now you know.

(If you're assuming that because I didn't respond until kind of late, it was because I was at work earlier.)

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

WHat I'm wondering is why you spent a few hours researching this to make a point that really doesn't need to be made.  I mean really, are you losing sleep over this BRTD?

A few hours? Try more like 5-10 minutes. The link to those maps is right at the top of the page you're looking at right now you know.

(If you're assuming that because I didn't respond until kind of late, it was because I was at work earlier.)

Well, I mean you had to know something about Texas demographics to be able to deduce that the central blue counties are heavily non-hispanic Catholic.  Which obviously takes more than looking at the maps in the link at the top fo the page.

That's something that anyone with an advanced knowledge in psephology knows, those counties are notoriously Republican and stick out like a sore thumb on the maps that FDR ran in, due to being anti-Confederate enclaves settled by Germans who are far more Catholic than the rest of non-Hispanic Texas. Even Wikipedia has a bit on it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Texan

Also given how many times you've brought this up (hell, I think you even made another thread over this very issue), I thought I might as well inquire about how much sleep you're getting.

Just saying.

Right now, not much. Though that has far more to do with 12 hour workdays than analysis of past elections.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Another fun bit of trivia about that central Texas area is that LBJ was actually from there, and won all but one of the counties in the area. That might not sound too impressive considering how much of a landslide he won by nationally, but consider that he won his home county of Gillespie, which is the most Republican county even for that region, and has not only literally never been won by a Democrat in any other Presidential election but didn't even give FDR over 10% in either election in the 40s, and in fact has not even any other Democrat over 30%. The strongest showing ever by a Democratic ticket that didn't have LBJ on it was Carter in '76 who got 25.79%.

You know I kind of just assumed everyone here knew about that central Texas region considering how much we love electoral geography oddities. And that itself I'll admit, is very very odd.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Yes. Not only is there no unified Catholic voting bloc, there never really has been one.

Why do you hate Catholics?

Saying there is no unified Catholic voting bloc = hating Catholics is quite a stretch of an assumption to make.

Come on now, we know you hate Catholics.

Then it's quite odd that I voted for one for President (and another ticket with one for VP)

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Looking at the 1960 map, there's no way I can see 83% of Catholics for JFK. Even 72% is a bit of a stretch, since in a lot of counties that would mean Nixon got a comparable percentage of non-Catholics, not entirely unfeasible, but the only way this could happen if it lots of mostly white Protestant counties didn't swing much, while white Protestants in counties that also had a large Catholic population swung heavily against JFK.

Either way if either figure is true JFK's Catholicism obviously helped a lot more than it hurt, which I do believe even if skeptical of those figures.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Something realized today is that this would be a good county to look at: Dubuque, Iowa. It's commonly known as having one of the largest white Catholic populations in the country, at about 80%. It voted:

Kennedy 63.30%
Nixon 36.64%

So for 83%, just about all non-Catholics in the county would've had to have voted for Nixon. For 72%, that would be about 70% for Nixon, maybe not entirely unfeasible, but consider that even in Sioux County of all places Kennedy broke 20% (way better than any modern Democrat can expect). Of course the 72% figure is possible if you consider that in places like South Texas the numbers for Kennedy were much higher...but that just kind of underscores the point that there was no Catholic voting bloc even in 1960.

In the end though Al is definitely right, if I had to estimate based on the 1960 map I'd say mid to high 60s though.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Something realized today is that this would be a good county to look at: Dubuque, Iowa. It's commonly known as having one of the largest white Catholic populations in the country, at about 80%. It voted:

Kennedy 63.30%
Nixon 36.64%

So for 83%, just about all non-Catholics in the county would've had to have voted for Nixon. For 72%, that would be about 70% for Nixon, maybe not entirely unfeasible, but consider that even in Sioux County of all places Kennedy broke 20% (way better than any modern Democrat can expect). Of course the 72% figure is possible if you consider that in places like South Texas the numbers for Kennedy were much higher...but that just kind of underscores the point that there was no Catholic voting bloc even in 1960.

In the end though Al is definitely right, if I had to estimate based on the 1960 map I'd say mid to high 60s though.

You would have to demonstrate that the Catholic population in Dubuque was representative of the country as a whole. Otherwise, what you've done is the equivalent of looking at Vermont's results in the 2008 election, and determining that whites voted overwhelmingly for Obama because Vermont is one of the whitest states in the country.

That's my point though, there wasn't a true voting bloc even in 1960.

Speaking of all this it's a bit funny that for someone who "hates Catholic" I myself would've obviously voted for Kennedy. In fact I would've voted for every pre-Paul Ryan major party ticket with a Catholic on it (though in the case of Al Smith this was mostly just out of opposing Prohibition, as his post-governorship life showed he was a pretty awful guy.)