First of all, Catholics as a whole lean Democratic in elections, but a lot of that is because of the rather lopsided preference for Democrats of the Latino population (along with the relatively small but almost wholly Democratic population of black Catholics). When you look at white, non-Hispanic Catholics
as an isolated group, they are far closer to 50/50 than the broader Catholic population-perhaps even a (slightly) lean Republican demographic at this point.
Now, white Catholics have a pretty massive gender gap in elections, IIRC (larger than the average). That is to say, a substantially greater percentage of white male Catholics vote Republican than of white female Catholics.
Furthermore, it is probably true that the more "serious" or "devout" white Catholics in terms of religious practice are considerably more Republican (or likely to vote Republican) these days than many of the "cafeteria" Catholics. However, here's the thing...
at almost every level of society, women are more religious (in both belief and practice) than men, on average. So even though
on average, it is true that devout Catholics are more Republican than less devout Catholics, Catholic men are more Republican than Catholic women, and white Catholics are more Republican than Latino Catholics, it is also true that Latino Catholics are more devout (on average) than white Catholics and that Catholic women are more devout than Catholic men (on average).
I wonder how much things like economic class, income, educational attainment, region of the country (compare Massachusetts or Rhode Island Catholics to Louisiana or Missouri Catholics, for example...) urban vs rural divide, etc. impact these other demographics that have previously been described....
TJ, BRTD, others...any comments?
