The Catholic Vote Revisited

My use of the word “revisited” above is a nod to an earlier entry on my (these days) much-neglected economics blog called LaMarotte. There I had a posting in February 2012 on the subject. The post showed the Catholic vote from 1948 through 2008. Today I thought I’d revisit the subject. The result, obtained from Wikipedia (here) follows:

According to CARA† the Catholic population (self-identified Catholics) was 74.2 million in 2016, still a substantial block of people, but evidently declining: in 2011 CARA had the figure at 77.7, in 2010 at 74.6 million. In  the 18-year period that I’m showing, the Catholic vote went to the winner in 14 out of 18 elections, thus 78 percent of the time. In that same period, democrats won office eight times, republicans ten times. The majority of Catholics voted for democrats in each year the democrats won but also four times when they lost. Catholics voted for republicans six times when they won but deserted that party the four other times the GOP was successful.  Catholics in the 1948-2016 period never voted for the GOP when it lost. On the whole, therefore, one infers, the Catholic vote is more likely to go democratic than the other way unless something rubs that collective the wrong way. In 2016, alas, the Catholic vote deserted Hilary Clinton and went with Donald Trump. Well, maybe the next time.

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†Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate, link.