Is/was Trump's strong Catholic support in the primaries underrated in analyses?

[All Along The Watchtower]

I think it is, especially in comparison to the "OMG, Trump won so many white evangelicals going up against Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio!" and all of the other hand-wringing related to white evangelical support for Trump.

Discuss with or without maps.

[RINO Tom]

It seems that there was actually somewhat of a swap between people who INITIALLY supported Trump in the primaries and those who most loyally support him now.  Obviously, there were legions of Trump primary voters who continue to support him now, but he did not win a lot of the people who posters stereotype as his core supporters, and he won a lot of self-described moderates and Republicans from areas that wouldn't "stereotypically" be drawn to him in some people's eyes.

[Senator Incitatus]

Yes, and Biden's almost unique ability among Democrats to attract (white) Catholic votes is underrated as a key to his electability.

They were the most important demographic in 2016 – get roughly 1% more of white Catholics to vote Democratic and you flip the election via MI, WI, and PA.

[RFayette]

It seems that there was actually somewhat of a swap between people who INITIALLY supported Trump in the primaries and those who most loyally support him now.  Obviously, there were legions of Trump primary voters who continue to support him now, but he did not win a lot of the people who posters stereotype as his core supporters, and he won a lot of self-described moderates and Republicans from areas that wouldn't "stereotypically" be drawn to him in some people's eyes.

Yeah, in the primaries, Trump did decently with Southern Evangelicals but not very well with Midwestern ones.  It was the Northeast that was Trump's strongest region in the primaries, and this was off the backs of moderate and Catholic voters; Trump also did surprisingly well with more affluent, educated voters in Massachusetts in the primary there, for example.

I don't think it was so much a "swap" though:  I think people who voted for Trump in the 2016 primary are still quite loyal to him; it's just that between the primary and the general election, there was a big, still-enduring increase in non-Southern Evangelical support for Trump - for example, Trump did very poorly in Northwest Iowa in the primaries but ended up outperforming Romney there in the general election.  The reason we don't see those Northeastern voters as 'typical' Trump voters is because so many fewer people voted in the Northeastern GOP primaries as opposed to the Democratic ones, so they are fairly small in number to other groups even if they are pretty strongly pro-Trump.   

[TJ in Oregon]

In the bulk, Trump's support from Catholics in the primaries is strongly related with the prevalence of Catholics also being blue collar white ethnics, who are one of the specifically Trumpiest, albeit not necessarily Republican in general, demographics in the country.

That being said, there is very likely some difference between Catholics and Protestants in terms of our understanding of government. Protestants are more likely to view government as a kind of rights-based social contract, an entity we should all be suspicious of. In contrast, Catholics tend to have a more community/national identity understanding of government. For example, look at the continued existence of white ethnic neighborhoods and identities, very few of which are Protestant. Trump clearly plays better with one than the other.

There is another sort of Catholic which Trump pretty clearly lost, which is the conservative white collar Catholic, probably from the Midwest, and seemingly likely to be of German ancestry. In contrast to the sort of ethnic policies that played will amongst blue collar folks, Trump didn't win these types of voters in the primary, especially Germans. I think the biggest thing here is Trump as a man. He simply doesn't follow Christian morality in oh so many ways, and says all kinds of wild crazy stuff that people of a more literal sort tend not to take well. This is the category I belong in. This sort of voter is conservative - but not traditionalist.

Then there are the traditionalists, too small to be a huge voting bloc, and too feisty to be dependable as one even if they were. Strangely, it seems like the real hardcore traditionalists, even the ones who don't normally vote Republican (mostly third party cranks -- very few traditionalists actually vote Democrat), all seem to love Trump. I think what they see in Trump is that Trump is a man who will fight, not necessarily for them specifically, but on terms they prefer to most other offers. This group, both men and women in it, often seem to point out, whether true or false, that Trump is masculine and that the other male Republican politicians are not. This may seem like a very odd anecdote but it seems to hold across three different states with completely different sets of people.

[Annatar]

Yes, Trumps gains with Catholics were crucial in winning states like Pennsylvania in 2016, as for how Catholics will vote in 2020, here is some data from Data for Progress, you can see the 2016 to 2018 vote choice comparison at the bottom of the article.

https://religioninpublic.blog/2019/02/12/has-donald-trump-pushed-catholics-to-the-left/