White Catholics will decide the upcoming US elections, according to William Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and former domestic policy adviser to President Clinton.
Galston reviewed the past 50 years of religious and political trends and how they will help researchers predict future elections, which the US faces this November when all seats in the House of Representatives of the US Congress are open.
Galston presented his research in a seminar hosted by The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life in May at Key West, Florida among journalists and research participants from publications like the New York Times, GQ, Fortune, The Economist, and The Chicago Tribune.
Democrats are planning on re-taking the majority of the House and Senate seats this November. Both chambers of Congress have been controlled by Republicans since 1994 - a mid-term election year when President Clinton, a Democrat, was in office.
Democrats see similarities between 1994 and today with a Republican in the Oval Office who has low approval ratings and in the middle of an unpopular war in Iraq. In 1994, Republicans gained the majority in the House for the first time in forty years. Clinton accepted the blame and added that "the era of big government is over".
But William Galston cautions Democrats of overlooking religion among the public which has been strongly captured by Republicans since a tipping point in 1992.
Galston reviewed the differences between Republican and Democrat voters, which he explained as the biggest single surprise in his study. He said between 1952 and 1988, the Democratic and Republican divide between frequent and less-frequent church attendance was only 3.7 percent with Republicans holding the slight advantage.
But starting in 1992, an unbroken string of double-digit differences developed, Galston explained, being even more pronounced among white voters who make-up the largest voting demographic in the US. Among whites, the gap increased to 17 percent and has stayed there ever since, favoring Republicans.
Religion and Class
Religion has become significantly more important over the past 20 years, Galston said. But he stated that it has not replaced the impact of income and economic class on voting behavior.
Between 2000 and 2004, according to the data Galston presented, the largest percentage rise was related to church attendance affecting the how people vote, rising from an impact factor of 22 percent to 28 percent. Membership-in-a-union household was second. Both income and religion had greater impact in 2004 than in 2000.
Galston said the importance of this is laid-out in the 2004 Presidential election.
"Whites who attended church weekly or more frequently, even if they didn't make any money at all, still voted for Bush. As a matter of fact, those who attended church weekly-or-more frequently at every income level voted for Bush," he said.
This led journalists to focus on traditionalist evangelical Protestants, but Galston explained they did not really swing all that much in 2004 relative to 2000; nor was their turnout huge. "As a matter of fact, the turnout gain in the entire electorate was 10 percent; the turnout gain among traditionalist evangelical Protestants was only 7 percent," he said.
The Catholics
By contrast, Galston's research showed a significant swing among practicing Catholics - 17 points toward Bush - and there was also a large increase in their turnout - 12 percent. "The real story of the 2004 election was much more about Catholics than it was about Protestants," he said.
"Despite the well-advertised decline of mainline Protestants, which is a genuine phenomenon, that arguably evangelical Protestants, as a percentage of the total population, peaked about 15 years ago and has been relatively stable ever
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