Media’s Watching Evangelical Voters, Catholic Votes Still Key

All the punditry about religion in this year’s presidential election seems to be about evangelical Republicans.

Will evangelicals vote for former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, because he’s a Baptist minister? Would they not vote for former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, out of the race since Feb. 7, because he’s a Mormon? Will the conservative evangelicals who made up the GOP base that won the last two presidential elections line up behind Sen. John McCain of Arizona?

It was only four years ago that pundits were consumed with the political leanings of Catholics. Would they back Democratic Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, the first Catholic major-party nominee since John F. Kennedy? Would the election outcome be affected by the statements of some bishops who said Kerry’s support for keeping abortion legal meant he should be denied Communion, and a few who suggested Catholics should not vote for him?

But in this year’s lively primary election season, there has been little attention to Catholics as a voting bloc – at least not in the mainstream news media. There are, however, some trends apparent in how Catholics are voting.

According to exit polling, Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York has been getting a majority of the votes of Catholics in nearly every Democratic primary, no matter who won. Only in Louisiana and Georgia did Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois get more votes from Catholics than Clinton did. In his home state of Illinois, which he won with 65 percent of the vote, Obama took only 48 percent of the votes of Catholics, to Clinton’s 50 percent.

Even in states such as Maryland, where Obama took 60 percent of the vote, Clinton was supported by a majority of Catholic Democrats.

In Wisconsin, according to a CNN Democratic exit poll, Clinton and Obama just about split the overall Catholic vote, 50 percent and 48 percent, respectively.