Why are Catholics Democrats?

The Secular Right ^ | October 30, 2009 | David Hume

[Alex Murphy]

Norman Podhortez just came out with a book, Why Are Jews Liberals?. It seems that this as intellectually interesting as writing a book, “Why are blacks Democrats?”, would be. You can tick off specific reasons, but in ethnic terms American liberalism and the Democratic party is a minoritarian coalition. To some extent it has been true since the recruitment of the Irish in the urban North in the early 19th century as allies with the outnumbered partisans of slave power. In fact The American Jewish Identity Survey tells us that once Jews become Christian, they aren’t so liberal. Here are the percentage of Republicans by Jewish subgroup:

Jews by ethnic origin & religion – 13%
Jews by ethnic origin, irreligious – 13%
Jewish by ethnic origin, “Other religion,” which is mostly Christian – 40%

Jews of other religion are also less intelligent than the other two groups, 36% college graduates vs. 57% for Jews who are religious and irreligious.

In any case, if Norman Podhoretz wants Jews to become Republican, he should encourage conversion to Christianity. Specifically, Protestant Christianity. Look what rock-ribbed Republicans Jim Talent and Marvin Olasky became. And don’t even talk about Howard Phillips, he wants to bring back to the inquisition for idolaters and pagans!

But I come not to talk of Jews, but of Catholics. As I said, the rise of the Democratic party as we know it was to a great extent concomitant with the first waves of Irish Catholic immigrants to Northern cities. The historical details of this are well known, so I won’t go into it, but to some extent the ties still are operative. According to the exit polls, last fall Barack Obama won 47% of white Catholics. He only won 34% of white Protestants! This is still a large difference.

Some of this might be accounted for my region and ethnicity (e.g., Italians and Northeasterners are more likely to be Catholic). So I looked in the GSS. There’s a variable “ETHNIC,” which asks where one’s ancestors came from. I wanted to look at a few groups, especially ones where the sample size wasn’t too small, and where there were likely to be Catholics and Protestants. So

1) French, who are those whose ancestors come from French Canada or France

2) German, whose ancestors come from German or Austria

3) British, whose ancestors are from England, Wales or Scotland

4) Mexican, whose ancestors come from Mexico

5) American Indian, whose ancestors come from Mother Earth’s union with Coyote

Some of these groups, such as Germans, had Protestant and Catholic cohorts from the beginning. By contrast, Mexican Americans have a large Protestant contingent through conversion (though some indigenous immigrants from Chiapas were converted in Mexico). American Indians were targeted by both Protestants and Catholics. Finally, though Huguenots have been prominent in the American aristocracy (Franklin Delano Roosvelt’s mother was a Huguenot, as were the ancestors of many Southern low country planters), I assume most Protestant French Americans arrived at their religion through conversion on these shores.

I also limited the sample to 1992 and later to have some contemporary relevance.

Then I compared these classes to two categories, political ideology and political party. I created an “index” of liberalism and Democratic orientation, so that I simply multiplied the frequency in each class by an integer. Ergo:

Index of liberalism = (% liberal) X 2 + (% moderate) X 1 + (% conservative) X 0
Index of Demo orientation = (% Democrat) X 2 + (% Independent) X 1 + (% Republican) X 0

So an index of liberalism of 1 means perfect balance, while below 1 means somewhat conservative, and above 1 means somewhat liberal (2 being all liberal). The same for Democrats. Then I took the ratio of Catholics to Protestants by their indices.

Liberalism Index
	French	German	Mexican	British	American Indian
Protestant	0.88	0.73	0.85	0.68	0.83
Catholic	0.86	0.8	0.96	0.93	0.85
Catholic/Protestant Ratio	0.97	1.1	1.13	1.37	1.02
Democratic Index
	French	German	Mexican	British	American Indian
Protestant	0.9	0.77	1.06	0.77	1.08
Catholic	1.07	0.88	1.32	0.95	1.37
Catholic/Protestant Ratio	1.19	1.13	1.24	1.24	1.26

What you see here is clear: Catholics remain more Democratic than their Protestant brethren. Some of this might be regional, but the effect seems to still show up if I constrain by region (though in some cases it does dampen a fair amount). The sample sizes for American Indians was small, but the party identification difference is outside of 95% confidence intervals.

Specific hypotheses? For Mexican Americans there are many reasons that Catholics are more likely to be Democrats. They’re probably a higher proportion of immigrants, and less assimilated and integrated into American society than Protestants. Protestants are mostly converts, and conversion will presumably be more likely for those who engage and interface with the majority Protestant society more often. The other groups are a bit more confused. The people of British origin are ancestrally mostly Protestant. Those who are Catholic today, whether through intermarriage or conversion, are different politically from those who remain Protestant. I suspect it has to do with a bias in terms of the type of person who would convert to a minority religion, or marry into a minority religion (Orestes Brownson was a nut). In regards to the Germans, only a minority of Protestant Germans are Lutheran (though some German immigrants were likely of Reformed persuasion, these would be a minority), rather, they’re well distributed across Protestant denominations. This suggests to me a high degree of assimilation and integration. By contrast, the Roman Catholic German population was an organized redoubt of anti-assimilationist fervor down to World War I, a fact which drove Irish American Roman Catholic clerics such as John Ireland crazy. As for the French Americans, I suspect that a more thorough process occurred with them that is occurring with Mexican Americans. I have read that the minority of Japanese Americans who adhere to the Buddhist Church in America are somewhat more ostentatious in maintaining their Japanese cultural traditions (e.g., language) than their co-ethnics who have converted to Christianity. I see no reason why this wouldn’t be true of Catholics (the majority of people of Irish descent today in the United States are Protestant, but I suspect they’re less obviously “Irish” in their cultural markers in part because of their religious break from tradition). Despite modern America’s Protestantization of Catholicism, just a few generations ago being of a non-Protestant faith was profoundly alienating from the mainstream (see Catholicism and American Freedom: A History).

I’m not presenting this to suggest that Catholics are inherently liberal or Democratic. The differences are not that extreme, though they seem robust and significant. But it is somewhat ironic in light of the role of Roman Catholic intellectuals at the highest reaches of the conservative movement, particularly at publications such as National Review. No, as I said, I suspect that Catholic adherence to the Left party out of the expected range of their demographic otherwise is a function of their minority status. Similarly, the small number of French Protestants who remained after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes were suspiciously well represented among French radicals involved in the Revolution which overthrew the ancien regime which had oppressed and marginalized them so. Obviously there’s nothing necessarily revolutionary about French Protestantism, rather, Catholicism was the customary and traditional religion of the French nation, and so it bespoke a streak of nonconformity to remain true to the Calvinist faith in France after the cessation of toleration for said faith.

[x]

Where I have lived, Catholics vote more or less like their Protestant neighbors.

Maybe it's different where you live, but that's your problem, not anybody else's.

[dead]

The left counts on importing millions of Catholic voters from the most Catholic nations in the world

The religion is irrelevant. The left wants Mexicans because Mexicans support growing social services and vote for Democrats. Their Catholicism is incidental and of no concern to Democrats.

If their Catholicism were central, Democrats would be fighting to import Italians and the Irish. They're not.

What is your quest here anyway? To get people to blame any Democratic Party success on Catholics? To what end?

[RobbyS]

Well, until the ‘60s, the Republican Party leadership was always part of what was then the “Protestant Establishment.” IKE got strong support from Catholics in ’52 and ’56 because a disproportionate percent of veterans , especially combat veterans, were Catholic. These went with JFK in ’60, of course, and stayed with LBJ in ’64. and I think with Hubert in’68. In ’72, they reduced their support for McGovern because though he was a combat vet, he had the manner of a unitarian minister. They supported Carter in ’76, because he was a vet and was, at first thought to be conservative. They went with Reagan in ’80 and ’84, because he was like them in manner , or rather like his dad, who was an Irish Catholic. But the Republican Establishment has never made any consistent effort to appeal to Catholics. George H.W.Bush is pretty representative of Republican Leadership. Romney may be Mormon but he comes across as an Episcopalian like Bush 41.

[RobbyS]

Well, they were pretty evil.

[x]

Good points. I don't think it was anything about Carter himself that attracted Catholic votes, though. The whole country swung to the Democrats in 1976. The swing was even greater in the Protestant South.

Looking at the numbers, it looks very likely that Northern Catholics voted for Carter more than Northern Protestants (who could still swing Vermont and Maine and Connecticut to the GOP), but I doubt Catholics were very enthusiastic about the peanut farmer.

Right now, the identification of the GOP with Southern rural Evangelical voters means Northern urban or suburban Catholics aren't that motivated to vote Republican. That's true of Protestant, Jewish, and irreligious Northern urban or suburban voters as well. Religion and even ideology aren't central. It's more a matter of different regional cultures.

[ansel12]

What a bunch of strange nonsense about veterans and combat veterans, and catholics supporting Reagan because he had a “ Irish Catholic” dad.

Catholics voted against Ike in 1952, there is some disagreement, but it is believed that for the first time ever, the republican won a majority of the catholic vote in 1956, when Ike was running for easy reelection and won in a landslide.

During WWII and after WWII, the democrats were overwhelmingly winning the Catholic vote, cleaning up in 1948 and 1952.

The Protestant vote went against the democrat in every one of those elections of 1940, 1944, 1948, and 1952.

Ike was the big vet in 1952, Nixon had been a Lt Commander, Goldwater was the big vet in 1964, Nixon was the big vet in 1968, Ford was the Big vet in 1976, Bush was clearly the big vet in 1992, Dole in 1996, George W. in 2000, McCain in 2008, yet they all lost the Catholic vote.

[Iscool]

And what about the 95% of Black Protestants that voted for Obama?

And what about the 100% of black Catholics that voted for Obama???

[GOP_Party_Animal]

The author is trying to draw a link between Catholicism (its teachings, practices, and traditions) to those that vote Democrat. If you're going to do that, wouldn't it make sense to first find those that observe the teachings, practices, and traditions of Catholicism, then see how they vote?

Catholic means baptized members of the Catholic denomination who consider themselves Catholics.

If I merely consider myself a conservative, does that make it so even though I vote for socialism?

[dead]

the democrats were overwhelmingly winning the Catholic vote, cleaning up in 1948 and 1952... The Protestant vote went against the democrat in every one of those elections

Oh! I see what you're looking for! I'll try to help:

Protestants are Number One!! Yeah, Protestants!!

There. Does that make you feel validated now? Protestants are awesome, and I'm not just saying that.

[ansel12]

First we have 160 years history of the Catholic vote. “...the rise of the Democratic party as we know it was to a great extent concomitant with the first waves of Irish Catholic immigrants to Northern cities.”

Second, I don’t know how you get confused on a baptized adult member of a church denomination, being as vague and useless as calling themselves something like conservative or liberal, or modern.

Catholic means baptized members of the Catholic denomination who consider themselves Catholics.

Protestant means all the other Christians, people who have never been baptized or may not have ever been in a church but consider themselves a Christian, blacks, Hispanics, gay Episcopalians, Lutherans, Evangelicals, and any and all, it is a vastly more diluted category than the baptized Catholic church members, yet the catch-all non-catholic Christian category is still far to the right of the catholic denomination.

[ansel12]

Would I liked to have seen FDR run out of office in 1940, and the democrats lose every election since?

You betcha.

[GOP_Party_Animal]

You've pretty much hit the nail on the head. What the FR anti-Catholic brigade is here to do is to find anything to try and shame Catholics. They do this by posting stories about liberal Catholics, about priests abusing boys, or about voting patterns of those that call themselves Catholics.

I'm not certain it's about their enthusiasm for their protestant faith as it is about their anti-Catholic bigotry. It's a shame, because Catholics on this forum agree with them on 95% of issues. You'd think they would argue theological issues with Catholics in the religion forum, but the don't. Instead they keep trying this "guilt by association" crap and they come through as so petty and small.

[RobbyS]

Catholics were 40% of combat Veterans during World War II. Ike got more Catholics than Dewey did in ’52, owing to the veterans vote. In any case, the Democratic Party in the ‘40s and ‘50s. was very different from what it became after 1968. Conservative Catholics kept Jimmy Byrnes from becoming Vp in 1944, and helped keep Harry Truman on the ticket in order to keep Wallace from making a come-back. They knew that there were Communists in the Party.and aimed to combat them in the Unions as well. As to vets, I am talking about Catholic vets. Anti-communism was a major factor among Catholics of that era. It wasn’t until the ‘60s and the Spirit of Vatican II Catholics that we get a different attitude. Then of course we get to ’72 when the liberal Liberals gained control of the party and gradually took over the labor unions after which lots changed.

[RobbyS]

FDR replacement in 1940 would have been Wilkie, and I guess you know he was at least as liberal os FDR. Dewey was not much different.

[ansel12]

Show me your sources for these claims, where is the Catholic veteran breakdown for the 1952 election when the democrats won the Catholic vote by a wide margin.

Where are your sources for the religious breakdown of WWII combat veterans?

[ansel12]

So, another Catholic voter supporting FDR as president for life, and supporting what he did to America.

We see a lot of this stuff on these threads, as we do of pro-immigration politics.

It amazes me what comes out on threads where the Catholic support of the democrat party comes up, suddenly we discover that we have a passionate DU group here.

[RobbyS]

If Wilkie, an ex-Democrat , had won in 1940, McNary, a progressive, would have been his Veep. McNary died of a brain tumor in Fe, 1944, and Wilkie of a heart attack in October, 1944. We haven’t a clue who would have been Wilkie’s running mate in 1944. Wilkie didn’t run in 1944 because he had become so progressive, that he had little support.

[ansel12]

If you put down your pro-democrat Catholic bat for a minute, and look around where you are at, you are on a conservative political site and we are discussing democrat voters and immigration, and the loss of America.

The title of the article is “”Why are Catholics Democrats””

[ansel12]

Show me your sources for these claims, where is the Catholic veteran breakdown for the 1952 election when the democrats won the Catholic vote by a wide margin.

Where are your sources for the religious breakdown of WWII combat veterans?

[RobbyS]

Had it not been for WWII, FDR probably would not have won re-election in 1940.