A series of recent polls show Donald Trump performing dismally among Catholic voters, who are the biggest single religious contingent in the American electorate.
The latest survey by the Public Religion Research Institute, an independent pollster based in Washington, DC, shows the Republican candidate trailing by Hillary Clinton by 23 points (55% to 32%) among Catholics, while among the electorate as a whole the Democratic runner’s advantage was 13 points (48% to 35%). This suggests a rather unexpected development. For decades, the Protestant-Catholic distinction has been losing salience in American politics, and pundits are now asking whether and why that trend has reversed.
On closer inspection, the picture becomes more complex. An ever-increasing share of American Catholics are Hispanic, and they (more than say, Hispanic Pentecostals) consistently vote for Democratic and liberal candidates. So if Catholics as a whole are returning to the Democratic fold, that is partly for the simple reason that more and more of them are Latino.
But the electoral behaviour of white Catholics is still a huge,...Continue reading
Source: United States http://ift.tt/2bGoewq
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