Don’t mess with Catholics: their vote played a crucial role in Donald Trump’s extraordinary victory

Analysis of the results of the US presidential election has shown that former President Donald Trump won the national Catholic vote by a fifteen point margin, winning 56 per cent of the Catholic vote against the 41 per cent achieved by Kamala Harris.

While the Catholic swing behind Trump exceeded expectations on the national level, the margin favouring Trump carried into some of the most critical swing states. In Pennsylvania, considered by both candidates to be the most important swing state, Catholics make up a quarter of the electorate. In an exit poll conducted by Fox News, Catholic voters here favoured Trump by a margin of 56 per cent to 43 per cent.

There are approximately 52 million Catholic adults in the United States, making it the largest religious denomination in the country. Across the US, it has increasingly felt in recent years that the Democrat Party, the party of the Kennedy family, is no longer a natural home for people of faith in general and Catholics in particular.

There implications of that – and how it related to Kamala Harris’s relationship with Catholics, in particular, and to the outcome of the election – are increasingly sinking in following Trump’s astounding victory, which some are calling the most spectacular political comeback in US history.

A recent article appeared in Newsweek titled “Kamala Harris’ Radical, Inflexible Policies Lost Her the Catholic Vote”. It describes how during Harris’s presidential campaign, “the incumbent vice president made no attempts to appeal to Catholic voters. Instead, she insulted us all the way to the finish line”.

By contrast, in the last few weeks of the election campaign, both Trump and his running mate, JD Vance, a Catholic convert, heavily courted the Catholic vote.

In late October, Trump called Harris “destructive to Christianity”, and said that Catholics are “treated worse than anybody”. In the same week, Vance published an opinion piece in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette accusing Harris of prejudice against Catholics.

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Donald Trump’s decision to make Vance his running mate appears to have paid off, whereas Harris’s decision to appoint as her running mate Tim Walz, culturally even further to the left than her, did not. If Harris had instead appointed Josh Shapiro, a practicing Orthodox Jew, as her running mate she might have had better luck. That Harris did not do this was entirely down to her desire to appease the American Arab vote, most of whom were never going to vote for her anyway, given the way events have played out in the Middle East during the period of Harris’s vice presidency.

So, what was it about Trump’s message that appealed to Catholics in general, and Catholics in the swing states in particular?

Inevitably the issue of abortion played a factor in encouraging socially conservative Democrats, especially Latinos, to vote for Trump. Ninety per cent of those who support abortion being made illegal voted for Trump. Certainly, Trump has embraced the role he played, via his appointment of conservative minded Supreme Court justices, ending the half century precedent that protected abortion rights nationwide.

Trump has “bigged” himself up as having put the “Pro Life movement in a strong negotiating position”, with a dozen states having enacted abortion limits since the ending of the Roe v Wade precedent. “Without me,” Trump has said, “there would be no 6 weeks, 10 weeks, 15 weeks, or whatever is finally agreed to. Without me the Pro Life movement would have just kept losing.”

Trump’s choice of Vance, who grew up in a poor, post industrial, blue collar community, undoubtedly helped finesse Trump’s message among blue collar voters in swing states. Those voters might well have previously voted Democrat. Although the Catholic Church emphasises the need to not demonise immigrants, Vance has nevertheless felt able to take a robust approach on the issue of illegal immigration, not least because of his own experience of the negative impact of mass, illegal immigration on the cohesion of poor, blue collar communities.

Vance’s own experience of the kind of suffering that has been experienced by America’s post industrial communities perhaps explains his willingness to use a factually ambiguous comment about illegal immigrants supposedly eating cats and dogs in Springfield, Ohio, in order to make America sit up to what he saw as a deeper truth about the reality of the suffering of blue collar communities across the US.

Vance’s willingness to use such striking imagery to make such a point is a good example of how Republican messaging during the Presidential campaign was very specifically targeted at those elements of the electorate who best respond to a form of messaging that makes use of colourful imagery rather than dry, technical detail.

Vance has cited two specific issues of concern for blue collar communities, concerns which have clearly stuck a chord with their constituents, given the swing in their support to Trump. First, there is the negative impact that neo-liberal economic policies have had upon the well being of those communities, policies that have led to an outsourcing abroad of the jobs that those communities previously depended upon for their economic and moral well being.

Furthermore, the profits generated by those policies have then been sucked up by global and national elites, rather than finding their ways back to the communities that surrendered those jobs. Concurrently, those communities have been disproportionately relied upon for the manpower needed for the military operations that have been needed to further the interests of those policies abroad.

Secondly, the system of welfare payments used by liberal elites to alleviate the material and spiritual problems caused in communities when their jobs have been outsourced abroad has failed. Vance has himself written about the morally degrading effect of such welfare programmes, describing the intentions behind them as being like sympathy for “zoo animals”.

Indeed, Vance’s refusal to subscribe to victim-based human-rights approaches to social problems is likely a consequence of the influence upon him of Catholic teaching about the innate freedom and dignity of the human condition, and the need to take personal responsibility when dealing with the sin/problem, the effects of which are especially corrosive in economically challenged and politically disenfranchised communities.

The influence of Catholic philosopher René Girard upon Vance will mean that the corrupt corporates will have to “up their game” with this vice president-elect. Girard specifically warns against any temptations to believe corporate pretence to altruistic behaviour or corporate social responsibility – indeed, Girard was uncompromising in his belief in the inherent tendency of corporates to criminal behaviour.

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Communities that have been exploited by corporates, whether through the ruthless outsourcing of jobs abroad, poor employment records, or the pollution of the local environment, will find that they have a formidable foe in Vance, who has already shown himself to be a champion of worker rights, in a manner previously associated with the Left.

Similarly, Robert F Kennedy Jr, who was promised a key role in any Trump administration and has just been nominated by Trump to serve as US Secretary of Health and Human Services, has been vociferous in his calls for a “draining of the Washington Swamp”. Kennedy’s concerns for the health of the young and the protection of the environment all reflect the influence upon him of his oft cited hero, St Francis of Assisi.

Brian Burch, president of the conservative activism group CatholicVote told Fox News Digital that the 2024 presidential election has shown that there is an emerging electoral trend that “the Republicans, if they are smart, will latch onto”. That trend is towards policies of the kind championed by Catholic supporters of Donald Trump such as Robert F. Kennedy Junior and JD Vance.

Policies that specifically value the positive role to be played in national life by people of faith, as well as the need for the Government to enact policies that protect families, communities and the natural environment against the excesses of not just corporate greed, but also an out-of-touch, liberal, aggressively secular elite that has dominated the corridors of power in Washington for far too long.

All these policies should surely resonate with the stoutest of Catholic hearts.

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Photo: Republican presidential nominee, former US President Donald Trump, takes to the stage for his last rally of the election campaign at Van Andel Arena in Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA, 5 November 2024. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images.)

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