Thompson Talks to Catholic Standard, Miami Herald About the Catholic Vote in the 2024 Election

November 13, 2024

Catholic Standard,The Miami Herald

Margaret Susan Thompson

History Department

Political Science Department

Campbell Public Affairs Institute

Program for the Advancement of Research on Conflict & Collaboration

Federal

Race & Ethnicity

Religion

U.S. Elections

United States

Catholic Standard

The Miami Herald

Margaret Susan Thompson

Exit polls by several major media outlets, including NBC News, The Washington Post and CNN, revealed that U.S. Catholics favored Trump by a historically large margin nationwide.

Margaret Susan Thompson, associate professor of history and political science, tells the Miami Herald although the religious group still tends to mirror the general public, it has changed a lot over the past two decades, growing smaller and more ethnically diverse.

Thompson says what shocked her was that the gap among Catholics was so much bigger than the general public. “One thing we do know is that the Latino vote broke for Trump to a much greater extent than it has for any Republican,” she says. “So the question is, does that add significantly to the Catholic margin?”

In the Catholic Standard article, “Economic concerns likely factor in victory for Trump, as Catholic vote shifts in his favor,” Thompson says, “Catholics, to some extent, may have broken more for Trump than the general public, this time, depending upon which exit poll you look at, but they’re still as divided as the American public,” she says, adding that their voting behavior might not ultimately be “all that different from the public at large.”