Both Latino and white Catholic voters turned to President-elect Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election, according to the first post-election poll to break down Catholic voters by ethnicity.
Trump defeated Vice President Kamala Harris with 312 Electoral College votes, compared to her 226, and won the national popular vote by nearly 2.3 million people. The polls at the exit of the polls showed that he won the overall Catholic vote by a double-digit margin on Election Day, after losing that demographic to Joe Biden in 2020.
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According to a survey published by the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) In December 2024, a large portion of Trump’s better performance among Catholics came from Latino voters, while a smaller portion came from white voters.
The survey was conducted from November 8 to December 2, 2024 and included a sample of 4,757 adults who said they voted in the 2024 election. The margin of error for the full sample is +/- 1.9 percentage points.
Big change in Latino Catholic voters
Although Trump lost the Latino Catholic vote, the poll suggests that Harris won a much closer victory than other Democrats have won in recent history. The poll found that Harris won 55% of Latino Catholic voters, while Trump won 43% of that demographic.
Harris’ 12-point margin of victory among Latino Catholics was much narrower than Biden’s victory among that demographic in 2020. That year, Biden won a whopping 35-point margin with 66% of the Latino Catholic vote compared with 31% of Trump, according to the Pew Research Center. If those numbers are accurate, this suggests a 23-point swing in Trump’s favor in just four years.
This also represents a big change from former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s margin of victory among Latino Catholics, who won by a 59-point margin, getting about 78% of the vote, while Trump only got 19%. %, according to another Pew survey. This suggests a change of 47 points in favor of the president-elect in eight years.
Trump’s support from Latino Catholic voters in the 2024 election was also much higher than the support received by former Republican candidates in recent years.
Former President Barack Obama won the Latino Catholic vote by a 46-point margin in his 2008 presidential victory and by a larger 54-point margin in his 2012 reelection. according to the Pew Research Center. Former President George W. Bush lost the Latino Catholic vote by 32 points in the 2000 and 2004 elections.
Lower growth among white Catholic voters
Support for Trump among white Catholics also grew in the 2024 election, according to the PRRI survey.
The president-elect received 59% of the white Catholic vote, compared to Harris, who received only 39% of that demographic, a 20-point margin of victory. This represented a five-point improvement from his 15-point margin of victory in 2020, when he won 57% of white Catholic voters compared to Biden’s 42%, according to Pew.
Trump failed to match the margin of victory he had in 2016, when he won among white Catholics by 64%, compared to Clinton’s 31%, according to Pew figures. In that election, Trump won among white Catholics by a larger margin of 33 points.
In previous years, white Catholic voters also supported Republican candidates. According to Pew figures, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney won the white Catholic vote by 19 points in 2012 over Obama. Former Senator John McCain won the demographic vote by just five points over Obama in 2008.
In 2004, Bush won among white Catholics by a 13-point margin, and in 2000 he won among that demographic by a seven-point margin.
Trump’s speech to Catholic voters
During the final weeks of his 2024 presidential campaign, Trump made a concerted effort to win the support of Catholic voters.
In a speech, Trump accused Harris of being “destructive to Christianity” and said Democrats treated Catholics “worse than anyone.” He also criticized Harris for not attending the annual Al Smith dinner, hosted by Cardinal Timothy Dolan of the Archdiocese of New York, calling it “deeply disrespectful to the event and, in particular, to our great Catholic community.”
Vice President-elect JD Vance, a convert to Catholicism, said during a speech that many Catholics “feel rightfully abandoned” by Biden and Harris. He also wrote an opinion piece in which he accused Harris of being biased against Catholics because of their record on religious freedom and of asking hostile questions of judicial nominees because they were members of the Knights of Columbus.
Translated and adapted by the ACI Prensa team. Originally published in CNA.
Tyler Arnold
Tyler Arnold is a reporter for the National Catholic Register. He previously worked at The Center Square and has published in a variety of outlets, including The Associated Press, National Review, The American Conservative, and The Federalist.