New poll shows Clinton leading among Catholic voters

This may have some significance; Catholics have voted for the winner of the popular vote in almost every presidential election since Roosevelt.

Details:

Currently, Clinton also holds a 17-point advantage among Catholic registered voters, driven largely by overwhelming support for Clinton among Latino Catholics. By contrast, at a similar point in the 2012 campaign, Catholics were closely divided between support for Obama (49%) and Romney (47%). Exit polls conducted on Election Day in 2012 found that Catholics ultimately split their votes between Obama (50%) and Romney (48%).

The survey finds a notable shift in the voting intentions of regular churchgoers. Currently, voters who say they attend religious services at least once a week are split almost evenly; 49% say they would vote for Trump and 45% say they would vote for Clinton. At a similar point in the 2012 campaign, Romney held a 15-point advantage among weekly churchgoers. And exit polls conducted on Election Day showed that Romney ultimately beat Obama by 20 points among voters who attend religious services weekly.

The shift in preferences among weekly churchgoers is driven largely by Catholics. Today, Clinton has a 19-point advantage among Catholic voters who say they attend Mass weekly, whereas Obama did not hold a lead at all among this group in June 2012.

…Across the board, members of nearly all major religious groups express less satisfaction with this year’s presidential candidates as compared with 2012. Fully two-thirds of religious “nones” say they are “not too” or “not at all” satisfied with the choice between Clinton and Trump, as do six-in-ten white mainline Protestants (61%) and white Catholics (59%). In 2012, by contrast, half or more of these groups said they were “very” or “fairly” satisfied with that year’s presidential candidates.

And what issues are most important to these groups?

There is broad consensus across major religious groups about which issues are “very important” in deciding who to vote for in the presidential election (even if they may disagree about which candidate is best suited to handle these issues). There are, however, a few modest differences in the political priorities of the country’s major religious groups. White evangelical voters, for instance, are more likely than white mainline Protestants and religious “nones” to say that immigration or abortion will be “very important” in deciding who to vote for in this year’s presidential election. The environment is of more concern to Catholics and religiously unaffiliated voters than it is to white evangelicals. And the treatment of racial and ethnic minorities is a higher priority for religious “nones” than it is for other groups.

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