Is there a Catholic vote?:
Jr, E J Dionne
administration and a Democratic Congress failed to deliver the basic components of the program: Health-care reform failed, welfare reform never got off the ground, political reforms in lobbying and...
...This was one of the wider Catholic/Protestant differences in recent years-and the difference shrank back in the 1994 midterm elections: White Catholics voted for Republican House candidates by 55 12: 5 May 1995 Commonweal...
...Before the New Deal, there were sharp differences among Catholic ethnic groups in their political allegiances...
...Polish Catholics...
...The Irish and the Poles, for example, tended to be more Democratic than Italians or FrenchCanadians...
...The notion that disappointment rather than ideological realignment was the real story in 1994 is underscored by several facts...
...To deny that the results, in some sense, did embody at the least an impatience with government would be foolish...
...Lyndon Johnson did nearly as well in 1964 against Barry Goldwater...
...What is most revealing, and what points most strongly to the disappointment hypothesis, is that the Democrats' 1994 losses were concentrated in the groups that had suffered a longterm decline in their economic fortunes...
...white Catholics voted for Bill Clinton over George Bush by a 42 percent to 37 percent margin, with Ross Perot winning 22 percent...
...the son asks his mother how she will vote that day and Mrs...
...But voting analyst Kevin Phillips noticed what proved to be an important trend: In middle-class Catholic areas, especially in New York...
...Dwight Eisenhower posted large gains among Catholics, essentially splitting the Catholic vote evenly with Adlai Stevenson in 1956...
...Goldwater actually ran quite a bit better than Nixon...
...O'Reilly is not the Catholic norm anymore...
...The notion of a "Catholic vote," of course, has always been problematic...
...First, the Republican victory was, indeed, historic, but it was also narrow...
...Mrs...
...But among those doing rather well, white male college graduates, the Democrats lost only five points...
...Among white women, the patterns were the same but less dramatic: The Democratic share among white female high school Ir Is there a Catholic vote...
...there is no denying that taking over the House of Representatives was a very, very big deal...
...O'Reilly has always, always voted straight Democratic...
...Looking at the most recent elections...
...Today, Puerto Rican and Mexican-American voters are far more Democratic than either Cubans or any wave of Catholic European immigrants...
...Roosevelt lost substantial ground among German and Italian Catholics and also suffered losses among Irish Catholics who were anti-British...
...Both groups are suffering in this economy...
...Those wit out college degrees and especially those with only high school diplomas or less held their own at best, and in many cases continued to suffer income losses...
...Al Smith's candidacy in 1928 generated enormous Catholic solidarity around the Democratic party and Franklin Roosevelt won a strong Catholic vote in 1932 and 1936...
...Kennedy won close to 80 percent of Catholic ballots against Richard Nixon...
...Yet the fact is that Republican House candidates took only 51 percent of the vote...
...Aw...
...O'Reilly snapped back...
...O'Reilly-to the polls on election day...
...says the son, "If Jesus came back to earth and ran as a Republican you'd vote against him...
...And beginning with George McGovern in 1972...
...The focus here is on white Catholics and white Protestants because African-Americans, Catholic and Protestant alike, are overwhelmingly Democratic...
...Jewish voters are consistently more Democratic than either Catholics or Protestants, usually backing Democrats by margins of 2-to-I or better...
...Moreover, the benefits of the economic recovery in its first two years were unevenly distributed...
...For the last two decades or so, there has been more a "Catholic tendency" than a "Catholic vote...
...In the 1960 election...
...Hubert Humphrey carried the Catholic vote again in 1968, but by a much reduced margin...
...Her upwardly mobile son, on the other hand, always splits his ticket and has been drifting more toward the Republicans...
...Because of his pro-allied sympathies...
...Between 1992 and 1994, the Democratic share of the House vote dropped a staggering twenty points-from 57 percent to 37 percent--among white male high school graduates who never went on to college...
...he story is told of a middle-class man taking his mother----call her Mrs...
...Her son is...
...Bill Clinton did especially well among Jewish voters in 1992...
...John Kennedy, of course, changed everything, but only briefly...
...The well-educated posted substantial income gains...
...The Democrats also fell fifteen points among white males who attended college but never got a degree...
...Why should he change his party after all these years...
...Harry Truman restored Democratic strength among Catholics pretty much across the board...
...strong ly anti-Hitler, rallied to the Democrats...
...The Republicans won thirty of their seats with 52 percent of the vote or less...
...Impatiently, knowing the answer in advance...
...But in 1940, Catholic votes again divided along ethnic lines...
...Catholic loyalty to the Democrats would never again be quite the same...
...Mom...
...White Catholics are fairly consistently 10 to 15 points more Democratic than white Protestants, but on the whole, Catholics have voted pretty much as the rest of the country has...
...as expected, "Straight Democratic...
...administration and a Democratic Congress failed to deliver the basic components of the program: Health-care reform failed, welfare reform never got off the ground, political reforms in lobbying and campaign-finance law died, and the administration's quite popular job-training initiatives never got financed at anything like the levels implied during the campaign...
...White Protestants voted for Bush 47 to 34 percent, with 19 percent going to Perot...
...hush...
...But in 1952 and 1956...
...Mrs...
...O'Reilly replies...
Vol. 122 • May 1995 • No. 9
