Romney/Ryan is first major party ticket with no Protestant on it.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Oh boy, don't know where to begin. Granted this isn't so full of absurdity, ignorance and bad posts as it is info that just needs more clarification for the most part. I'll start here:

Some Protestant sects don't consider Catholics Christian.

Well that depends on how we're defining "sect". Might be true for the First Baptist Church of Podunk County South of Mason Dixon and plenty of churches that are basically cults and consider just about all other Christian denoms to not be Christian either (think of Westboro Baptist or that Koran burning guy in Florida), but there is no actual serious Christian denomination that holds a theology stating Catholics are not Christians. Even the Seventh Day Adventists, who formed under a rather anti-Catholic theology (that Sunday worship is the mark of the beast, and that the Catholic Church is responsible for distorting this and misleading God's people), don't hold to this view, granted they've deemphasized most of the anti-Catholic stuff in the last century and hold it only nominally now, but even their founder said in one of her writings that she admits there might be true followers of Christ in the Catholic Church, even if misled. Bob Jones University, Jack Chick and the like aren't affiliated with any real denominations.

Now there is no Catholic voting bloc. There never really has been either, but there certainly isn't now. The Catholic vote is so bellwether that it went Gore-Bush-Obama in the last three elections, and in fact the last election it probably deviated from the popular vote winner is 1968, and even then it was probably pretty close in a pretty close election. Prior to that you'd have to go back to...1928. Even if Catholics were a unified bloc, both tickets are the same in that they are led by a non-Catholic with a Catholic as VP so this is basically the biggest non-factor ever.

I've always found the idea that evangelicals are staunchly anti-Catholic as a rule to be largely an invention of Catholics with a persecution complex and secularists trying to make evangelicals out to be even more bigoted then they really are, and I'd say that Rick Santorum's campaign provides quite a bit of evidence in favor. The only anti-Catholic evangelicals I've ever met have been either A) ex-Catholics themselves and likely bitter in the same way Catholics turned mainline/other religion/nothing usually are and/or B) liberal evangelicals that are against the church due its policies on women and gays. Granted I'm not the top guy to talk to for the opinions of conservative evangelicals, but once again, please look toward Rick Santorum's campaign.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

BRTD, right-wing evangelicals aren't as bigoted against Catholics as they used to be, sure-but what of Al Smith's campaign in 1928? Or Kennedy's in 1960? Hell, you even had a good deal of mainline Protestants opposing them on the grounds that they would be dictated by the RCC.

Well if you have to go back at least 52 years to find examples...

Mind you JFK still won and won most of the most heavily evangelical states (even in Tennessee, Virginia and Kentucky he won the historically Democratic areas, the historically Republican ones came out against him), and Al Smith's best areas were evangelical, true the elections at the time weren't exactly democratic, but there were plenty of other issues besides Catholicism. The idea that either one would submit the US to the rule of the Pope is a lot like Birtherism or believing Obama is a Muslim, it might've been believed by some very uneducated types and hacks who weren't going to vote for either one anyway, but it was very very far from a widespread belief that most people adhered to.

And right-wing evangelicals liked Santorum only because he spoke their language. Using him to argue that right-wing evangelicals aren't anti-Catholic is like saying Alan Keyes or Herman Cain proves that Republicans don't have a sizable racist voting bloc.

Neither one has ever won a Republican primary. What it shows is that not all Republicans are so racist they'll vote against any black (and Lewis has noted that there is evidence that hardcore conservative activists are probably less racist than rank and file GOP voters, not surprising and indicative considering where their support has come from.) Worth noting that by most counts Santorum performed even better with evangelical voters than Huckabee in 2008 did.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Cajuns were a pretty unified bloc in 1960 no doubt (though as noted also before that), but as for Catholics in general:





Eastern Wisconsin, especially northeast is where the Catholics live (BTW JFK only won Brown county by about 200 votes), and Long Island and Staten Island are fairly obvious (also JFK only got about 54% in Queens.) Even if JFK did particularly united Catholic voters (which he did in some places) it's quite obvious the reason why.

And in 1964 everyone was a unified voting bloc who wasn't a hardline partisan GOP voter whose area had been voting Republican for a century prior or white southernor.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Yeah evangelicals were even relatively socially liberal until the Moral Majority. Lots of evangelical churches ordained women prior to the mainline denominations doing so.

This is a good case where you have to really draw an evangelical/fundamentalist distinction, and the fundamentalists of the frothingly anti-Catholic variety tend to be extreme even by fundamentalist standards and big on things like KJV-only and consider about 90% of evangelical preachers as well to be heretics and false teachers, Jack Chick has called C. S. Lewis's works Satanic actually.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Another fun fact:

America has yet to elect a President who has both self-identified as being an 'Evangelical Protestant" and is also from an Evangelical Protestant denomination.

Carter

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Another fun fact:

America has yet to elect a President who has both self-identified as being an 'Evangelical Protestant" and is also from an Evangelical Protestant denomination.

Carter

..has said in interviews that he does NOT identify as being "evangelical."

Did he while he was in office?