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

[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.