Protestants and Catholics: Who are more right-wing (in the US) on average?

[All Along The Watchtower]

I thought it would be fairly obvious that Protestants in the US are more right-wing on average than Catholics. Even not taking into account evangelical Protestants (who are like 77% Republican), mainline Protestants are something like 55% Republican.

Compare that to Catholics, most of whom don't listen to the Church hierarchy anyway and the majority of whom, I'm pretty sure, vote Democratic (especially considering the Hispanic population).

Like I said, I think it's pretty obvious who's more right-wing on average, but I guess some people disagree.

[All Along The Watchtower]

This is kind of a pointless comparison with so much variation within the Protestant groups and nationally. In Minnesota the exit polls both showed Obama better amongst Protestants marginally and far better amongst mainline Protestants.

Ultimately though even though Harry once basically argued I should convert to Catholicism based on this on AIM the difference is that the Catholic church is all ran by one hierarchy while the Protestant ones aren't, so they can't be treated as a unified entity. And even if many people who identify as Catholic don't listen to the Vatican, plenty of people wouldn't be comfortable identifying as such as long as it's still running things. So renouncing Catholicism and converting to some Protestant church (like tons of people I know have) is hardly a "right wing act".

Minnesota =/= the United States. Are you familiar with the concept of aggregates?

Also, it is a right wing act if the Protestant church you're converting to is in the Southern Baptist Convention, the WELS, the Assemblies of God, or any number of non-denominational fundamentalist churches. And those are the Protestant churches that are growing the fastest.

[All Along The Watchtower]

Both Protestants and Catholics in the US are extremely diverse groups (and, added together, something like 80% of the US population is at least nominally in one of those two groups, and it goes higher if you're willing to count Mormons as Protestants).

The thing that really confuses the issue is that "votes Democratic" /= "is liberal" and "votes Republican" /= "is conservative."  So I'd like to clarify which of those two points you mean.

Well, my OP was mainly me just trolling a certain member here, to be honest.

[All Along The Watchtower]

Anyway, it's a moot point because religion is so tied to specific cultural contexts. For example, yes, in Europe Catholics tend to be more conservative than Protestants (but of course, the term "conservative" means something different in Europe than in the US!)

My point was, no matter how liberal or progressive your own American Protestant church is, it's still generally the exception to the rule. It'd be like saying, "It's pointless to try to compare Hispanic voting population with white non-Hispanic voting population because there's so much variation within those groups." Well yes, Captain Obvious, but that doesn't change the fact that, on average, a white non-Hispanic is going to be more likely to vote Republican than a person of Hispanic descent.