Trump's bid for Catholic voters

Religion and ancestry was a hidden force behind Biden's victory in 2020. Now that he's gone, Trump is hoping to capitalize.

How exactly to make sense of this?

Or this?

Not exactly known for his religious adherence, this marks (at least?) the second time Donald Trump has posted religious imagery on social media. (And on platforms like X and Instagram no less, which his campaign seems to be using more intentionally compared to his quasi-burner account on Truth Social.)

And this was not simply any religious imagery—but specifically Catholic imagery. The prayer to St. Michael the Archangel was composed in 1884 by Pope Leo XIII. And the “Happy Birthday Mary” picture is one of La Virgen de Guadalupe, one of the most sacred religious symbols in Latin America (hat tip to Mike Madrid, whose recent Substack further unpacks the significance of this to Latinos in the U.S.)

These posts by Trump signal an outsized effort by his campaign to win over Catholic voters. Amidst all the talk of educational or racial realignment, we often ignore religion. And the evidence is that Catholics may be one voter group more available to Trump now that a Roman Catholic no longer heads the Democratic ticket.

A further data point comes from a student poll out of Notre Dame, a Catholic institution. In 2020, Notre Dame students in the same poll favored Biden 66-27. In 2024, it’s Trump over Harris by 48-46.

Polling on religious preferences in American election is spottier because religious affiliation is not always asked by pollsters, but multiple data points suggest Biden in 2020 doing better than Clinton among Catholics.

Pew’s validated voter study showed a 52-44 Trump margin in 2016 turning into 50-49 defeat in 2020. White Catholics in their study shifted from 64-31 Trump to 57-42, an 18-point shift. (I think that overstates things somewhat, but given how hard it is to find shifts elsewhere among white voters,

The exit poll, flawed as they were, showed a shift from Trump winning Catholics by 50-46 in 2016 to losing them by 47-52 in 2020.

Winning Catholics was a huge focus of Republican strategists in the George W. Bush era, when the streams crossed and Republicans began winning white Catholics. Catholics voted virtually as a bloc for John F. Kennedy, when he won 78 percent of the votes, as against 61 percent of white Protestants who voted for Richard Nixon.

Catholicism was far less determinative of vote choice when Joe Biden was elected the second Catholic president, but the evidence for its impact is far from nonexistent. The argument here can be made both based on the polling data and election results.

In 2020, the Northeast swung distinctively for Biden, even the non-metro areas. In no other part of the country was there a solid regional swing of this nature—beyond the education divide in large metros or Hispanic/Asian swings.

And Catholics—especially white Catholics are pretty well-concentrated in the Northeast.

Also concentrated in this region are people of Irish descent—people with the same ancestry as Joe Biden.

You might be hard pressed to find a voting bloc where Kamala Harris is doing worse than Joe Biden, but if you were to pick any, it might be Northeastern Catholics, who likely shared a slight affinity to one of their own but not to the Californian now leading the Democratic ticket.

In the candidate swap, Trump sees an opportunity with Catholics.

Where is the Catholic vote particularly important? The Rust Belt, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin especially.

And Hispanic Catholics vote to the left of other Hispanics. Religiously active Hispanic Catholic Democrats are the ultimate cross-pressured group, right-leaning in their social values but Democratic-voting in a voting bloc that’s zooming right.

In my book, I wrote about how Trump not only targeted Hispanics in 2020. He targeted Cubans with messaging and language specific to that community, and did the same for Venezuelans and Puerto Ricans. Likewise, Trump is now segmenting the Hispanic vote by religion, seeking out votes among Catholics where he has the most room for growth.

And by posting apocalyptic imagery that will provoke the secular establishment media, he’s hoping that they will overreact and disparage religious symbols that are perfectly normal and commonplace for a key segment of voters up-for-grabs in this election.