Catholics and US Politics After the 2020 Elections

This chapter explores the dynamics of progressive Catholicism in contemporary American politics. Since the early 2000s, Democrats, alongside followers of the Church’s social movement and other faithful activists, have attempted to build an electoral coalition of religious liberals. If Donald Trump’s presidency, dominated by an aggressive Christian nationalism, seemed to dash these hopes of a “Religious Left”, Joe Biden’s election has offered a cautious sense of relief to progressive religious Americans, as the Democratic president extensively relies on Catholic social teaching to advance his policy agenda. The chapter first retraces the genealogy of the Catholic Left, from the early twentieth century to its resurgence at the forefront of national politics over the past two decades. The contribution then focuses on Trump’s and Biden’s presidencies, and assesses to what extent, in the context of broader demographic changes, Catholics and other religious liberals can actually remain relevant actors for the political Left.

What has been the specific Catholic right's contribution to American Christianism under the Trump presidency? It provided an important ideological foundation for Donald Trump’s presidential campaigns and participated in his religious policy during his term, focused on religious freedom’s defense, and elevated the conservative moral and social views in the executive branch and especially the judiciary. Alongside the Catholic Westerners fearing American decline, another intransigent faction of the Catholic right shares Catholic Westerners’ Manichean vision of the political field. It helped to spread a growing Christianist trend to Europe, with the help of inter-Christian and Catholic conservative networks.

The conservative Catholic–evangelical alliance in the age of Donald Trump is the topic of Neil J. Young’s chapter. Donald J. Trump surprised many observers in 2016 not only by heavily winning the evangelical vote but by taking a majority (52%) of the Catholic vote. Many observers at the time took the Republican presidential nominee’s bellicose rhetoric and reports of his unsavory personal conduct as evidence that he would lose some substantial evangelical and especially Catholic support in the election. Again in 2020, Trump looked to his evangelical base and to Catholic voters, especially in the Upper Midwest, to win his reelection. But shifting developments during Trump’s presidency and the Catholic Joe Biden running as the Democratic nominee spelled different circumstances for 2020. Trump’s rise to the White House and his presidency revived new predictions of the eventual political demise of the Religious Right. But those predictions have missed the Religious Right’s endurance as both a grassroots movement and a theological development and not merely as an ordinary interest group. Still, the question of whether the Religious Right can endure as a fragile alliance of evangelicals, Catholics, and some Mormons remains an open question in the post-Trump era.

The presidential election of 2020 presented the bishops with a complex situation, with an incumbent who had delivered a lot on life and religious liberty issues and stood at odds with Catholic social teaching on immigration, the death penalty, racism, … and a Catholic candidate who, while supporting these issues, clashed with the bishops’ teaching on the issues of abortion, religious freedom, and LGBTQ+ rights. This resulted in disagreements among the USCCB over which issues to prioritize, which also revealed a growing chasm between Pope Francis and the majority of the USCCB membership.

Gerald P. Fogarty, S.J. provides a broad historical review of the complicated and changing relationship between the Vatican and US politics, leading up to his analysis of the role of the US Catholic Bishops and Catholic voters in the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections. Many Church leaders have long been voices on key moral and social issues in US politics, but not without controversy both within the Church and outside of it. The 2020 election of a Catholic president who is prochoice posed an especially complicated challenge for Church leaders confronted with how to respond to Biden’s candidacy and then-presidential election.

The 2020 presidential election was one of the most contentious in US history, with nearly 160 million ballots and a turnout rate of 66.8%. Moreover, with the Democratic candidate, former vice president Joe Biden, being Catholic, there was substantial speculation during the campaign how the Catholic vote ultimately would break out in the election. The fastest-growing component of the Catholic vote in the United States is Latino, and some observers speculated during the campaign that Latinos generally could tip the balance to Democratic nominee Joe Biden, given the significant percentages of Latino voters in several critical states in the Electoral College. The issue of Catholic Latino voters is complex because the Latino category is not monolithic, as many of the Latino demographic groups have different political preferences. Meanwhile, younger generations, including Latinos, are leaving religion behind, making it unclear how this trend will impact Latino voting behavior. The Catholic component of the Latino population is also in decline. Meanwhile, there are consistent trends among Latinos, including their still strong preference for the Democrat Party and their overall increasing population in the country. In 2020, the Latino vote, though not critical to the outcome, helped Joe Biden’s successful quest to become president. The question however remains whether the Democrat Party can continue to hold the Latino vote into the future.

In this chapter we explore whether a Catholic Vice Presidential candidate helps the ticket win a greater share of the Catholic vote in presidential elections. In addition, we investigate preliminary indications of the Catholic vote when a former Catholic Vice President—Joe Biden—was the presidential nominee in 2020. We trace the gradually changing partisanship of white Catholics and the impact of demographic change on the Catholic vote.

This chapter explores post-election polling data to examine differences between Catholics who voted for Biden and those who voted for Trump. Contrary to conventional wisdom these two groups of voters share many things in common. Key cleavages are identified that divide them as well. These include self-identified race and/or ethnicity, marital status, frequency of worship, and gun ownership. In terms of attitudes and opinion, political ideology and views about who would be best to lead the economy, taxes, health care, the environment, and COVID-19 were important. The outcome of the 2020 election among Catholic voters fits a recent pattern. When Democrats can win a clear majority of Catholic voters this often coincides with a victory overall. Republicans on the other hand typically do better when they can evenly split the Catholic votes. Catholics have not voted in a clear majority for a Republican candidate since 1988.