Bezpłatny fragment - Voting Catholics

This book is dedicated to my family, who showed me the value of education…

This book is intended to show changes in the voting model of the Catholic electorate in the United States from 1976 until the present. Its purpose is to explain the balanced electoral trend within the Catholic electorate, which over the years has moved from strong support of the Democratic Party to the center of political dispute, and even began to slightly prevail in favor of the Republican Party. The thesis put forward as an explanation for this phenomenon is the visible advancement in the social hierarchy of white Catholics, which is why their voting model turned towards the American political right, whose main electorate are white Protestants. This became a potential reason for equalizing the electoral tendencies among American Catholics, whose social and material advancement was associated with the imitation of the electoral tendencies of the upper social class in American society, i.e. the followers of Protestantism. The work also presents the impact of the pontificates of the popes who exercised their ministry in the period covered by the researched phenomenon. John Paul II and Francis had the most important influence on the turn of white American Catholics towards conservative electoral preferences. The whole of the evidence is also related to the general electorate in the United States, showing a broader picture of political preferences among voters of diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds. Taking into account the observed facts and empirical evidence, the text presents the influence of racial origin, taking into account in particular the dominant position of whites in the American Catholic environment, on the overall result of political support for the Catholic electorate in the United States.

Introduction

The history of the Catholic Church on American soil dates back to the colonial era, when English Catholic colonialists, persecuted in their homeland by the Protestant majority, established a settlement in Maryland, where they founded the first, historic and religiously diversified capital of this state, St. Mary’s City in 1634. It was only 14 years after the first Puritan settlers had arrived on the coast of Plymouth on the deck of the Mayflower. After the liberation of the first States from British rule in the wake of the American Revolution, the first Archdiocese of Baltimore was established in 1789, headed by John Carroll. His brother, Daniel, was one of the three Catholic Founding Fathers of the United States, following his cousin Charles Carroll as one of the signatories of the Declaration of Independence of 1776. The contribution of Catholics to the formation of the newly created American state, the formation of government administration at both federal and state levels was thus noticeable from the very beginning.

Catholicism in America also flourished as a result of the 18th and 19th century Spanish missions in the western part of today’s United States, where settlements were carried out in what is now California and New Mexico. At that time, expeditions and the colonization of the southern parts of the country by the French settling on the Mississippi River and creating cities such as St. Louis or New Orleans had another significant impact on the development of Catholic settlements in North America.

The number of Catholics in the United States increased drastically due to their increasing reproductive capacity, the great migration from Ireland and Germany, and after 1880 also from Eastern Europe, Italy or Poland. The migration of Catholics from across the American southern border, mainly from Mexico, began later in 1910 and continues to this day. With the significant increase in the Catholic population in the United States, construction of parish schools, colleges, and seminaries began. The Jesuits were particularly active in this field, but it is also necessary to mention the nuns who were active both in school and hospital work.

Study by the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University shows the current size of the Catholic population in the United States. As for 2016, figures show 58,621,794 active adult Roman Catholic believers on American soil. In absolute terms, the estimated number of Catholics is about 72 million people, which is about 20% of the entire population of the country. It is the largest Christian denomination in America and the second largest religious group after Protestants.

The first significant mark of the political presence of Catholics in the United States was already mentioned in this study, thus noticeable influx of Catholic immigrants from Ireland. A wave of Irish immigrants beginning even before the crisis of Irish potato famine in 1845, greatly increased the U.S. Catholic population, introducing a significant voting bloc to large cities like New York and to most of the country. In the 1840s, nearly half of all immigrants in the United States were Irish. Over the course of the following century, as already mentioned, significant numbers of Italian Catholic migrants also made their way to the United States.

At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, the United States experienced a greater influx of migrants than in all its history until 1890. Most of them were Catholics who turned firmly towards the Democratic Party in their political choices. The reason for this particular choice was the unfavorable attitude of the then Protestant elite, composed mainly of WASPs representing Republican Party circles, towards the emerging lower immigrant class composed of Catholics. The Democratic Party seemed to them more favorable to their presence and participation in social and political life. After the American Civil War, the voice of Catholics began to be even more noticeable to representatives of both political parties. The political game with the position of Catholics in American society was evident in 1884, when Republican candidate James Blaine expressed public disdain for the vote of the Irish, accusing Catholic representatives of collaborating with the Vatican. The Democrats took advantage of this situation by spreading the news of the Republicans” hatred of immigrants, therefore gained a significant majority of the Catholic voters. The 1884 election was won by Democrat candidate Grover Cleveland, as the American Catholic — Democratic partisan bond continued.

The turning point for Catholics was 1928 and the candidacy of a Catholic contender Al Smith in the presidential election on behalf of the Democratic Party. However, the strong sentiment of radical Protestant circles associated with the Republican Party continued to discredit the Catholic through conspiracy theories about the annulment of Protestant marriages, the prohibition of the possession of a Bible, and the influence of the Vatican after the eventual election of a Catholic as president. Smith lost, but the presence of the Catholic electorate, as well as the Catholic candidates, was becoming more and more significant.

This was particularly evident in the 1936 election, where American Catholics backed Franklin Delano Roosevelt around 80% of the vote, and in his next election again gave high support of 73% in 1940 and 1944. After Roosevelt, the vote of Catholics decided to elect another Democrat to the position of president — Harry Truman (1948). A few years later, they also provided almost record high support for their brother in the faith John F. Kennedy in 1960 and his successor Lyndon Johnson in 1964 — after the death of the first Catholic U.S. president in the assassination in Dallas. However, these were one of the last elections in which the Catholic vote so clearly indicated a specific political party. In the following years, Catholics began a trend of differential support for the candidates of both major political parties. While in 1968 they still supported Democrat Hubert Humphrey with a majority of votes, in 1972 their vote played a significant role in the re-election of Richard Nixon, when the majority of the Catholic constituency elected a Republican candidate for President of the United States for the first time in decades. In the elections of 1976, Catholics backed another Democrat, Jimmy Carter, however the political disparity and difference within this constituency started to progressively melt. It was a turning point, because it was when the Catholic electorate began to be considered as a „swing voting” group shifting its almost even support from one party to another.

From then on, their support was getting progressively evenly distributed, not significantly overwhelming either side. One of the few exceptions to this rule was the significant increase in support for Ronald Reagan in his second presidential campaign of 1984. It was when a huge number of conservative Catholic votes secured him the second term in the White House. Over time, the gap between the Democratic vote and the Republican vote within the faithful of the Catholic Church in the United States has stabilized and narrowed to approximately 2% in favor of the Republican candidate in the 2020 presidential election, Donald J. Trump. It is currently the most balanced, religious group of voters in the country, and its vote has often determined the final selection of a winning candidate in recent years.

The analysis of the steadily equalizing and almost constant tendency in the voting of Catholics in the United States in the presidential elections of recent years is crucial to identify the reasons for this phenomenon and to answer the question why the Catholic electorate has largely abandoned the support of the Democratic Party and shifted the weight of its vote to the center in recent years. Moreover, it has also begun to shift it to the opposite side of the political dispute, where there is a growing aspiration to support the Republican Party with a razor-thin majority. This analysis is thus useful in order to predict the Catholic voting preferences and shape of the Catholic vote in the upcoming elections. The research gives additional framework for a further study in the area of American Catholics voting preferences. American Catholic faithful’s voting pattern in the U.S. Presidential elections, after being historically strongly related to the support of the Democratic Party, since 1976 has been trending to evenly split because of a conservative lean of the majority of American Catholics towards the Republican Party caused by a progressive lean towards Protestant constituency and following of their social, religious, therefore political behavior of mostly Non-Hispanic White constituency. It is visible in improvement of living standards, rising economic affluence, growing social position of White Catholics in the United States and striving to catch up with the Protestant elite, but also doctrinal trends emerging from the center of the Roman Catholic Church, followed by Hole See’s politics which make them navigate and bring their voting preferences closer to those presented by a large part of Protestant denominations in the United States which results in increase of the number of Republican Catholic votes in the presidential election directly proportional to the increase in the wealth of Non-Hispanic White Catholics in the United States, which effectively took away a part of the Catholic electorate from the Democratic Party by evenly balancing the voting model.

Presentation of the Roman Catholic constituency in the United States

Catholic Church in the United States of America holds about one-fifth of the total adult population with the number of voting eligible faithful estimated for 51 million people. It is the second, after Evangelical Protestants, Christian denomination and the largest religious institution in the United States. Such a dimension is needed to underline not only the importance of the church itself, its impact on American society, but also, as a matter of its size — a widely recognizable diversity. There are different layers of diversity within society, however the most important ones in a matter of the conducted research are race and political views. While shifting attention towards the issue of race, it is essential to present a raw data in that matter, which is going to emphasize and narrow the scope of attention to the two major racial groups within the Catholic Church in the United States of America. Pew Research Center emphasizes, over a half of Catholics in the United States are White (59%) and a little less than half are people who come from other racial and ethnic minority backgrounds, the largest of which includes Catholics who are Hispanics (34%). Share of both Blacks and Asians in the group of Catholic faithful in the United States is marginal, as in both cases it is around 3%. Having these facts, it is justified to claim — Non-Latino Whites and Hispanics are the two key racial groups shaping the Catholic vote in the U.S.

Referring to the data showing racial diversity in the American Catholic Church, we can now move on to the next step, which is checking the electoral preferences of certain racial groups before answering the question of linking them to the phenomenon of an equal tendency to vote in the presidential elections in the United States after 1976. Surveys dedicated to this topic were made by Pew Research Center as part of the Religious Landscape Study report on their website published in 2014. The one asking for a party affiliation shows that among the representative group of American Catholics: 37% are Republicans, 19% do not have specific affiliation and 44% are Democrats. In analysis of the results of the Catholic vote in presidential election presented at Georgetown University’s website, the party affiliation survey provokes observation that despite votes being almost evenly distributed between the two parties, on the course of history since 1976, the Democratic Party is the one, which gets a majority out of total Catholic votes more frequently. Nevertheless, on the course of recent presidential elections in 2016 and 2020, the American Catholics’ vote began to prevail over the Republican side with Donald J. Trump support estimated for 52% in 2016 and 50% in 2020. It is worth showing that the growing results of the Republican Party candidates can also be seen in the elections to the House of Representatives of Congress. In the Gallup ranking included in the research by William B. Prendergast and Mary E. Prendergast, the percentage of Republican voting is visible. The study shows a drastic increase in Catholic support for conservative politicians between 1958 and 1998. The difference and shift in Catholic support for the Republican Party between the two periods is 22%.

Knowing general party affiliation in the Catholic Church in the United States, another step should be taken to see how the faithful vote among races within it. White party affiliation is largely split between two major political parties, and racial minorities partisanship is described as a long-term affiliation cycle toward the Democrats following the presidential election of 1932. Majority of the Catholic Republican electorate comes from Non-Hispanic White constituency which stands 76%, whereas the Catholic Democratic constituency, apart from being 50% Whites, is strongly supported by racial minorities including Latinos 39% or 5% of Blacks. There is also a significant number of undecided voters described as “No Lean” constituency. Having these statistics in mind, knowing that mostly Republican, Non-Hispanic Whites hold a majority within the Catholic constituency it allows to draw a conclusion that most of the Catholic electorate, at least for 2014 (when the surveys were conducted) is a rather politically conservative environment. It finds confirmation in another recent data which states most of American Catholics claim to present a conservative ideology, with a close result of moderate approach to politics and liberal stance as the least popular one. For the purpose of the further research, it is necessary to analyze and understand voting pattern within racial groups in the Catholic Church and connect it to the issue of wealth and impact of socio-economic variables on political choices.

Income distribution among the social stratification order in the Catholic constituency and its influence on electoral voting pattern