DeDurkheim

@dedurkheim.bsky.social

180 Followers 249 Following

Sociologist of religion. Catholic. Normie liberal. Mostly on hiatus from posting unless and until this site improves.

Bar graph of Presidential elections from 1952-2020. Based on National Election Studies survey data. Catholics voted more Democrat than other (non-South) whites in every election through 1996, but the advantage was gradually diminishing since (roughly) 1968. This is probably due in part to the increased salience of religious culture war issues, perhaps especially abortion, among attending/practicing Catholics. Starting in 2000, Catholic voters have usually learned Republican. Especially as more liberal and rare-attending Catholics have increasingly been dropping out and becoming religious “Nones.”The biggest outlier in the graph is the overwhelming support for Kennedy, a Catholic, in 1960: +49 percentage points. More recently, 2004 is also something of an outlier, with Kerry +10. The latter result is the most unexpected finding, as most previous analyses have suggested that Kerry’s Catholicism did not help him at all with his fellow Catholics. Note: I will add 2024 to the graph when the NES data is updated, some time next year.