Catholic voters were critical of Donald Trump’s resounding victory: ‘Harris neglected us’

Catholic voters across the country swung en masse toward former President Trump in the 2024 election, fueling his unexpected stunning victory on election night.

In 2020, Catholics were evenly split between President Biden and Trump, with 50 percent supporting Trump and 49 percent supporting Biden.

According to exit polls collected by Fox News on election nightCatholics nationwide swung 9 percentage points in Trump’s favor, with the former and now future president winning Catholics by 10 points.

Bill Donohue, president of the religious civil rights group Catholic League, told Fox News Digital that Catholics had decisively rejected Harris because of what he called “overt hostility against Catholics.”

“She was rejected primarily because she is associated with the politics of extremism, and this is something that the American people will never approve of,” he said.

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There are approximately 52 million adult Catholics in the United States, making it the largest religious denomination in the country. Until now, political views among Catholic voters have been divided between the two parties, leading many to believe that there is no such thing as a Catholic voting bloc.

But after Tuesday’s election results, Brian Burch, president of the conservative activist group CatholicVote, said Catholic voters had proven that theory wrong.

“There’s an emerging electoral trend here that Republicans, if they’re smart, will seize on,” he told Fox News Digital.

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In January, CatholicVote endorsed Trump as president for the first time in its history.

The group committed $10 million to advertising, education and an outreach program among Catholics, highlighting critical swing states.

According to a CatholicVote memo provided exclusively to Fox News Digital, the group contacted more than two million Catholic voters nationwide, including approximately 100,000 “high affinity, low propensity Catholics” in the swing states of Arizona, Nevada, Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.

The memo said the 2024 election proved that “Democrats have a Catholic problem and must now contend with the growing influence of a progressive wing (of the) party that is openly hostile to people of faith.”

Birch explained that “Democrats have managed to keep a lot of Catholic voters together in the past, either through tradition or through social justice platitudes and posing as if they care about the poor and vulnerable.”

“It turns out that in this election, the poor and vulnerable are the people suffering from inflation and an uncontrolled border that has led to crime and instability in their communities,” he said.

While Catholic swings exceeded expectations nationally, in some of the most critical swing states the margins of Catholic voters supporting Trump were even larger.

Pennsylvania, which has 19 electoral votes and was considered the most important swing state of both candidatesCatholics make up a quarter of the electorate. Catholic voters in Pennsylvania preferred Trump by a 13-point margin, 56% to 43%, according to a Fox exit poll.

Meanwhile, Catholic voters in the next two largest swing states—North Carolina (16 electoral votes) and Michigan (15 electoral votes)—voted in favor of Trump by 17 and 20 percentage points, respectively.

Trump also carried Wisconsin’s Catholics by 16 percentage points, helping hand the former president the state’s 10 electoral votes.

According to CatholicVote’s memo, there were two key points in the 2024 presidential race in which Harris lost the Catholic vote. This first happened when Harris told protesters in La Crosse, Wisconsin they ‘went to the wrong rally’ after they shouted, “Jesus is Lord.” The second incident occurred when Harris said in an interview with NBC that she opposed religious exemptions for doctors performing abortions.

“Kamala Harris has disdained us and repeatedly confirmed our deepest fears about her hostility and bigotry toward Catholics. She opposed the judicial nominee because he was Catholic. She introduced legislation that would reduce our charitable activities. She said there would be no benefits for Catholics when it came to her abortion policies, which would have effectively ended Catholic health care in America,” Birch explained.

In short, Burch said it became clear that Harris was “a threat to our Catholic way of life.”

At the same time, he said that Trump’s message of improving the economy and restoring law and order on the border and in communities increasingly associated with ordinary working class Catholics.

What has emerged, Birch said, is a “new synthesis” of what he called “a populist social justice that prioritizes family policies, American economic policies, and then, more broadly, the plight of the average American who feels abandoned.” behind its own government.”

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Burch said he communicated “fairly regularly” with Trump’s political advisers on issues most important to everyday Catholics and their families. He said he spoke with Trump shortly before he took the stage at a rally in Milwaukee on Friday night.

“We were talking about the importance of the Catholic vote, and I told him that … the Catholics were going to run this election for him,” he said. “Turns out I was right.”