Will white Catholics break with tradition and vote for Clinton?

By M.S.R. | WASHINGTON, DC

A NOTICE in the newsletter of a Catholic church in Bethesda, Maryland, a prosperous, largely white suburb of Washington, D.C., suggests that Catholic voters should consider one question above all others in 2016. “Who will do the most to protect and respect life and conversely, who will do the most to promote and even pay for the direct destruction of innocent life?” it reads.

If a recent poll is anything to go by, however, white Catholics, who have long favoured Republican presidential candidates over Democratic ones will not vote for Donald Trump, who has cast himself as fiercely anti-abortion in 2016, but for Hillary Clinton. This would be a significant change.

Catholics, who constitute the largest religious body in America—and represent around a quarter of all voters—are often described as a swing voting group. In the past two elections they have narrowly voted Democratic; in 2004 they voted for George W. Bush. But it is hard to imagine them voting Republican again, without a big change of sentiment among Democratic-leaning Hispanics, who represent a third of all Catholics and a majority of millennial Catholics. However, white Catholics have in recent elections been solidly red; in 2012, 59% backed Mitt Romney.

But a recent poll by the Public Religion Research Institute and the Brookings Institute suggests white Catholics may now favour Mrs Clinton by four percentage points. White Protestants appear to be backing Mr Trump by the same large margin as they supported Mr Romney in 2012—69% say they will vote for him. Why are white Catholics different?

There are two main reasons. Catholics have historic links to the Democratic Party; a century ago Irish, Polish, Italian and other immigrant groups helped the Democrats rise to prominence in northern urban states and, even as these Catholic groups have prospered and grown more conservative, the party has never quite lost their love. The church’s liberal wing has helped cement the attachment. Liberal Catholics—probably including many of the congregation in Bethesda—tend to be more concerned with social justice than the stringent teachings on personal morality, including the wickedness of abortion and evil of gay marriage, that preoccupy America’s leading Catholic clergy. This helps explain why white Catholics have tended to vote Republican by a smaller margin than white Protestants. It also explains why moderate white Catholics, who are receptive to both traditions within the church, even though they have tended to vote Republican in recent elections, are swing voters.

Mr Bush’s success, in 2004, was down to his relatively good showing, for a Republican, with Hispanics—but also his efforts to woo Catholics more widely. He spoke at Catholic universities and recruited Catholic field workers coordinators, especially in swing states. Mr Trump’s interactions with Catholicism have been rather different. In 2013 he said in a radio interview that Pope Benedict should “give up and die”. In February, he described Pope Francis as “disgraceful”, after the pontiff criticised Mr Trump’s threat to deport 11m illegal immigrants. The chief executive of Mr Trump’s campaign, Steve Bannon, has shown the church similar disdain; he once said “Catholics want as many Hispanics in this country as possible, because their church is dying …”

Unsurprisingly, the response of Catholic leaders has been less than effusive. In the past, its bishops though officially bound not to endorse any candidate have lobbied for pro-life candidates: in 2004 a group of bishops pushed hard for the re-election of George W. Bush by blanketing churches with guides explaining that Catholics should vote on non-negotiable issues like abortion and gay marriage. Despite the tentative endorsement of Mr Trump’s pro-life stance in that church in Bethesda, the hierarchy has been largely silent on him.

Some Catholic groups have excoriated him. Earlier this month, after the release a 2005 video tape in which Mr Trump boasts crudely of groping women, Catholic Vote, a conservative group that campaigns against abortion among other issues, said in a statement that Mr Trump’s comments were “disgusting and simply indefensible … Catholics should not waste their breath defending them”.

Mr Trump is now trying to improve his standing among Catholics, mostly, because he is not subtle, by claiming that Mrs Clinton detests them. In particular he has pounced on some comments on Catholicism by advisors to Mrs Clinton’s campaign that were recently revealed in a trove of emails published by Wikileaks. In a conversation with Jennifer Palmieri, the campaign’s director of communications, John Halpin, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, a Democratic thinktank, characterised the beliefs of conservative converts to Catholicism as “an amazing bastardisation of the faith”. They must, he wrote: “be attracted to the systematic thought and severely backwards gender relations and must be totally unaware of Christian democracy.”

The exchange did not constitute an attack on Catholicism. This was two liberal Catholics letting off steam, in a way that represents the frustrations of many liberal Catholics with the church’s conservative leadership. Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the conservative archbishop of New York, nonetheless claimed that this was an attack on his church, and demanded an apology from the Clinton campaign; none came.

Meanwhile, Mr Trump is not making himself more loveable to Catholics. On October 20th, the presidential nominees gave speeches, as is customary in an election year, at a Catholic fundraising dinner in New York. The idea was that they should pause hostilities and engage in some light-hearted banter; instead, Mr Trump, dressed in impeccable white tie, rounded off a tasteless attack on Mrs Clinton by saying: “Here she is tonight, in public, pretending not to hate Catholics”. The audience jeered at him. Cardinal Dolan, who had placed himself between Mr Trump and Mrs Clinton for supper, looked embarrassed.