Race IS the factor. All things being equal. If Demographics had not changed dramatically since 1980, Romney would have won in a landslide in 2012 just simply by carrying the white vote by 20%. As whites continue shrink in the electoracte, so do GOP fortunes. The Democrats have won the popular vote in the last 5 out of six elections, no doubt largely to changing demographics, and an electorate more interested in getting free stuff and less concerned about higher taxes and deficit spending.
The Catholic denomination isn’t a race, it is a church denomination.
A denomination that has almost always voted democrat, a denomination that only recently got large numbers of non-whites, a denomination that is being imported by the millions.
Even in 2012, ignoring the history and 2008, the new defense of importing millions of more Catholics is that the white portion moved right in a year of almost economic depression, and in a year when the failed democrat incumbent was being labelled as in a “War against the Catholic church”, that isn’t much to cling to, and it is meaningless anyway, because all that matters is how Catholics vote, the effect of the Catholic vote on American politics.
When Catholics, whether white or Hispanic switch to a non-Catholic denomination, they start voting against the democrats, even the Hispanic non-Catholic-Christian vote, is close to a 50/50 vote.