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.

[Torie]

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

72% of Catholics (then mostly white), voted for JFK. Today however, I agree with your point. White Catholics vote like white Mainline Protestants pretty much. The clearer psephological divide these days is between the religious and irreligious.

[All Along The Watchtower]

The clearer psephological divide these days is between the religious and irreligious.

Of course, the white "evangelical" Protestant population being considerably more Republican than either white mainline Protestants or white Catholics (both of whom  lean Republican, but not to the extent that the irreligious are Democratic) kinda skews the distribution, no?

[Lief 🗽]

There definitely used to be a (fairly) unified Catholic voting bloc, as Torie points out. But that was before the Hispanic population exploded.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The implications are silly, but the term can be used as a useful shorthand in certain places.

[afleitch]

It depends really. Catholics don't vote a certain way because they are Catholic. If that was the case then the pattern would be international. Catholics in Bavaria and Catholics in Scotland have very different voting behaviour. If Catholics are an 'entrist' minority; i.e they have entered a primarily non culturally Catholic nation then they may coalesce around the party that doesn't, for want of a better term, treat them like sh-t. That association can decrease in time as they become a part of accepted society.

[Mechaman]

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

Perhaps if you mean like 90% Catholic, you got a point.

However, if you mean to say that Catholics as a whole have never leaned significantly towards one party you are wrong.  Pre-McKinley Catholics were pretty darned Democratic (even the German Catholics).  This was due to the perception by many Catholics that the Republican Party was full of "Know Nothings", or nativists.  Unfortunate implications, such as "Rebellion, Rum, and Romanism" by extreme GOP elements no doubt didn't help the Republican cause to dispel such talk that they hated immigrants and non-protestants.  I'd probably say Catholics back then were probably about 65% Democratic, which isn't like diehard but is still pretty strongly Democratic.
Post McKinley you have a point, as the rhetoric of Bryan Democrats alienated a good deal of the German Catholic population.  Italians and other Catholic minorities in urban areas tended to lean towards Social Democratic and other third party politics, though there were still somewhat of a Democratic bias amongst them.  The structure of the spoils systems put into place in urban machines, which tended to overwhelmingly favor the Irish at the chagrin of other machine voting groups, also had a bit to do with the rise of a number of minority Republican politicians in states like New York who rallied to the GOP mostly in opposition against the Democratic political machines.

I do agree, given the amount of diversity in the Catholic church the phrase "Catholic vote" doesn't make much sense.  However, does it annoy me?  No not really, but then again I'm not you.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Catholics in Bavaria and Catholics in Scotland have very different voting behaviour.

I like that this is a massive understatement even though the word 'very' was used.

[Yelnoc]

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

Why do you hate Catholics?

[Grumpier Than Uncle Joe]

There definitely used to be a (fairly) unified Catholic voting bloc, as Torie points out. But that was before the Hispanic population exploded.

And these catholic browns that you mention, how many show up at the polls?  The whites will.

[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.

[後援会]

At the very least, we can agree that Hispanic American Catholics, White American Catholics, Northern Irish Catholics, Bavarian Catholics, and Japanese Catholics all have very very different voting patterns.

[Oldiesfreak1854]

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

72% of Catholics (then mostly white), voted for JFK. Today however, I agree with your point. White Catholics vote like white Mainline Protestants pretty much. The clearer psephological divide these days is between the religious and irreligious.

Wasn't it more like 83% of Catholic who voted for JFK?  My guess as to how Obama won the Catholic vote last time is because of Latinos and Irish Catholics, and that will likely hold, even with the birth control mandate.

[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.

[Mechaman]

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?

[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.)

[Mechaman]

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.

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.

[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.

[Oldiesfreak1854]

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.

Nixon carried Wisconsin in 1960.  And as I understand it, German Protestants trended to vote Republican and German Catholics tended to vote more Democratic.

[minionofmidas]

I don't think there were Catholics among the stereotypical German Texans (ie the guys who moved straight from infertile central German hill country to settle in freshly Comancheless infertile central Texan hill country, sometimes whole villages at a time.)
Wisconsin, otoh... loads of German Catholics. And yeah, they've always been Republicans. (Green Bay is notorious for Belgians, of course.)

[Yelnoc]

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.

[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)

[Mechaman]

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.

As undeniable as that fact is, I don't think this thread is good enough evidence.  Perhaps the right question would be, at least for this one, "why do you OBSESS about Catholics?"

Is there some childhood story about a priest and a confession booth that BRTD hasn't told us?

[Keystone Phil]

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

72% of Catholics (then mostly white), voted for JFK.

Just yesterday, I was wondering what the numbers were during that race. Thanks!