Obama and the Catholics

In what will probably be a series of posts breaking down the exit poll data from the presidential election, I start today with religion.  Specifically, with Catholics. Why?  Mainly because I'm Catholic and this is my blog, but also because Catholics are viewed as a vital swing vote and they made up, in 2012, 25 percent of the electorate.  The numbers are kinda interesting.

• Obama won the Catholic vote overall, 50 percent to 48 percent.  That's a bit surprising given he was supposedly at war with the church.  Bishops, take note.

• Okay, but let's dig deeper.  Among white Catholics, Romney won 59-40 percent.  That's about the same racial breakdown for all voters, so not much to see here folks.  Let's move on.

• Among Catholics who attend church regularly, Romney won 57-42 percent.  Republicans usually win this category.

• Among Catholics who do not attend regularly, Obama won 56-42 percent.  These are mirror images of one another.  Fascinating stuff.  By the way, in the electorate there are more non-regular Catholics than regularly attending Catholics by a couple of percentage points.  In other words, Obama wins.

When the raw data are available I can break these down even further, but for the moment these rough crosstabs will have to do.  To sum up my blunt Catholic analysis, Romney wins big among Catholics who regularly go to Mass, Obama wins big among those who are less regular in their attendance.  But the kicker is there are more of the a latter than the former.

Stay tuned for more data crunching.