Why have Catholic voters rejected Trump? All year Catholic commentators and media outlets have provided their thoughts, but they have largely been overlooked by a mainstream media more fascinated by the story of evangelicals and Trump. As early as August 2015, the independent Catholic news site Crux noted that Trump’s aggressive anti-immigration stance put him at odds with Catholic bishops who were lobbying Congress to pass comprehensive immigration reform.
Writing in National Review earlier this summer, the political scientist Michael J. New commented that Trump’s “Catholic problem” likely stemmed from Trump’s harsh rhetoric on Latino immigrants who many American Catholics see positively as the future of their church, but also because ofTrump’s attacks on Pope Francis. [...]
Trump’s poor standing with Catholic voters resembles his “Mormon problem,” as I have written about. Taken together, the Catholic and Mormon rejection of Trump also further spotlights the embarrassment of evangelical support for the Donald.
The news that some 80 percent of white evangelicals plan to vote for Trump seemed astounding enough when the latest polls were released. But now compared with Catholics and Mormons rebuffing Trump, evangelicals’ overwhelming support for Trump offers damning evidence that they care more about political power than principles in this election cycle. [...]
Still, as I’ve argued in my recent book We Gather Together, the evangelical-Catholic political alliance remained a fragile one, even when results from the ballot box made it appear more solid. Even as conservative Catholics drew to evangelicals on social issues, like abortion, their church often took political stances on matters like welfare and nuclear armament that put them in opposition to the Republican Party. With strong Catholic Church teachings that seemed to support both Republican and Democratic positions, Catholic voters have tended to evenly divide between the two parties in most recent elections.
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