What resources are there for answering this question: Did "the Catholic Vote"

[patrice]

put George Bush over-the-finish-line in 2000 or 2004? In other words, did Catholics make the difference between winning and losing? Could he have won without them?

What resources are there for answering this kind of question?

[HockeyMom]

1. If it is any indication,

Troll the Freepers. A lot of them are "conservative" Catholics and still support him because of their pro life stance. I have heard many of them say that trumps all other issues with them.

[YOY]

2. Single issue voters

Stupidly scary folks willing to sell their own souls and all other values for that one misunderstood issue.

[OHdem10]

3. These One Issuue Catholic are a small minority

in Catholic Church, but they are noisy.

What hurt most was that two, maybe three Bishops made a big
deal and stated they would permit Kerry to receive Holy Communion.

I hope the American Bishops see the error of their ways and
do not comment publicly on the Issue this time. There will be
some loudmouths like Bill Donnahue but they do not carry that
much sway.

Some Catholics (very patriotic) and stuck with Bush. This was
as big a factor than Abortion. Hopefully, they too see the war
was not all it was cracked up to be.

[eridani]

12. Wonder what they'll have to say about Giuliani?

Or the Governator?

[patrice]

4. I need the religious democraphics of the vote.

Someone close to me is learning some painful lessons about "the Church" and I thought I'd ease her conscience a bit about her anger.

Funny though, how what she sees going on in her beloved church parallels very closely the same power struggle going on in the Democratic party - Ownership.

Given some of the information in Jeremy Scahill's book, I think there needs to be research specifically focused on the role and effect of the Catholic Church, BUT it's about more than revenge for me. It's about Freedom; the People just can't change, and take their own responsibility for doing better, until they see the truth.

[Awsi Dooger]

5. Bush did much better with the Catholic vote in 2004

I think the exit polls had him losing the Catholic vote slightly in 2004, then winning it by 4 or 5 points in 2004. It was consistent with his overall performance, faring several points better as an incumbent against Kerry than open race vs. Gore. But there apparently was a slight trend to the right, even if the dynamic had been the same.

Google for the national exit polls of 2000 and 2004, if you want the specific numbers. Also you might check the 2006 exit polls to see how catholics voted in a wave election in our favor. I don't remember those figures.

[patrice]

6. Thanks. I wasn't querying with "exit polls". That should help.

I did see where The National Catholic Reporter said in Nov. 2000 that Catholics were 45% Gore, 47% Bush.

I'm not sure what can be said about this. What with suppression of the vote and all in both 2000 and 2004, I'm not sure it's possible to say something such as "Bush would not be pResident if it were not for Catholics."

I'm going to look into it further. I'm going to ask the NCR reporter Tom Roberts (I've seen him at Social Justice conferences, so I think he'll be open to the question) whom he might go to if he were looking for a break down by denomination in Bush:Gore and in Bush:Kerry.

[OHdem10]

9. Your friend is correct the LiberalvsConservative struggle

continues in Catholic Church.

There is a glimmer of hope. Pope Benny commented that Communism is
not good neither is UNREGULATED Capitalism good. This got played
MSNBC crawl. It has been years since the economic side of
Conservatism got mentioned by Catholic Church and get played
in the TV Media.

hope springs eternal.

[patrice]

10. I know a major parish in Colorado Springs that is going through

some pretty oppressive backlash right now. Very, very disliked, possibly "emotionally troubled", pastor, whom they've had for a very long time and were hoping would be rotated out - wasn't - but a "better fit" Jesuit associate pastor WAS.

Parishoners are still reeling from a national event they hosted for something called "The Order of the Spur" and now this . . . .

[patrice]

11. I'll bet Benny still slaps around whatever Liberation Theologist

that gets within his reach.

[damntexdem]

7. The answer is 'no' in both cases:

election fraud did it both times.

[patrice]

8. Yes, I understand that.

But, I guess what I'm wondering here is:

Election fraud (or at least demonstrable evidence thereof) did not happen everywhere; would it have been possible for election fraud, as it has been empirically defined in 2000 and 2004, to throw those elections without the level of Catholic support that Bush received.

[Febble]

14. Well, your problem is that

the source of information you need to answer the question is the exit poll data, and the exit poll data has been used as evidence of fraud.

I just ran the crosstabs for 2004:

With weights applied, Bush won the catholic vote (52.1% of the catholic vote), but without weights applied, he lost it (45%).

So what you conclude depends entirely on whether you think the post-stratification reweighting is valid. We can't assume that a priori, but, as you may know, I do think (having gone into the question rather extensively) that it almost certainly was - that the poll over-sampled Kerry voters relative to Bush voters, and that would include Kerry catholic voters relative to Bush catholic voters.

And if so, then Bush seems to have won the catholic vote in 2004, whereas he lost it in 2000 (47%)

http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2000/results/index.epolls.html

As a catholic, that makes sense to me, although it also appalls me. There was a certainly pressure on catholics not to vote for Kerry, and too many catholics do what they are told. Frankly I blame people like Archbishop Chaput for Bush's win:

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/12/politics/campaign/12catholics.html?ex=1255233600&en=0ad90158e24ec98f&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland

and the people who paid attention to him, of course.

[Febble]

15. duplicate post

[Febble]

16. BTW from the 2004 data

around a quarter of the electorate identified as catholic (re-weighting makes little difference to the percentage).

[eridani]

13. True, but it had to be close enough to steal

In 2000 and 2004 it was, but not 2006.

[blm]

17. With vote switching it doesn't matter if they switch at 5% or 10% rate. They'll

switch at whatever rate was needed.

[eridani]

18. They are not relying only on vote switching

If they were, why bother with voter suppression? Vote switching isn't always possible.

[blm]

19. They used plenty of tactics - suppression, purging, switching, padding - all made

possible by the DNC's refusal to secure the election process for the four years they promised to do so when they opened up the Office of Voter Integrity in 2001.

2002 and 2004 were going to be stolen, no matter what. Terry McAuliffe's abysmal stewardship of the DNC made sure of that.