It is only in recent elections that pollsters gave specific attention to asking voters about their religion and how they practiced it and how it affected, or didn’t, their vote. This change roughly parallels the contemporary abandonment by sociologists of secularization theory that projected an inevitable diminishment of the public role of religion in modern societies. In contrast, the 2004 pre- and post- election polls greatly expanded questions about religion beyond simple denominational preference to include not merely the broader categories of evangelical and born-again but also measures of religious attitudes, religious attendance, and the practice of prayer. Abortion, same-sex marriage and, even more recent, stem-cell research received great attention; but polls also examined religion and attitudes toward poverty causes, health care, and, less frequently, items about war. In the immediate aftermath it was rare to hear a Democrat talking about the election results without hearing a mention about religion, the churches and the need for the party to learn how to talk about abortion and gay marriage. ¹ These voting data will capture the attention of those interested in promoting the impact of an evolving and comprehensive Catholic Social Thought that links social justice and human life concerns in a way hardly captured by contemporary political discourse.

First, the requisite caution. All the terms, save the purely descriptive or factual, employed by pollsters are, to some degree, necessarily vague, and so our inferences, it should be stated at the outset, are to be cautiously rendered. An immediate interpretative contest emerged, for example, when the National Exit Poll conducted on behalf of the Associated Press and the national networks, reported that 22 percent of the 2004 voters cited “values” as their most important issue. Republicans, and more than a few Democrats, took this to mean that the Republican Party’s support for legal abortion restrictions and opposition to gay marriage gave them an important edge. But others insisted that “values” also referred to issues of poverty, inequality, health care, and the morality of the Iraqi war. All can agree on the diffuseness of the term. But the more complete surveys of American voters can help us clarify to some degree the role of religion and values in voting decisions. More importantly, they raise questions for those who feel a responsibility for a Catholic contribution to the common good. While it is likely that the election was primarily decided by voters’ perception of national security and personal safety in a new era of terrorism, the moral issues—tracked mostly by the interminable abortion controversy—contributed importantly in a close election. The long run question, important to Catholic Social Thought and future election discourse, is the overcoming of the separation of human life and justice and peace issues.

VOTING POLLS: What they say and what they might tell us

We will rely mostly on The Zogby Post-Election Poll, THE 2004 FOURTH NATIONAL SURVEY OF RELIGION AND POLITICS (by John C. Green of the Bliss Institute at the University of Akron) and The Pace University Post-Election 2004 Survey of First-Time Voters (conducted by Jonathan Trechter and Chris Paige).

The Zogby poll, as well as the others, confirms that when they are asked about it, voters will say that religion matters, with nearly half describing religion’s role ² as “very important in their lives.” Another 30 percent say “somewhat important” while a comparative few of 20 percent dismiss religion in their lives as either “not that important” or “not at all important.” Those, and they are a majority, who attest to the value of religion in their lives are far more likely to vote Republican and to consider themselves “conservative” while those dismissing it are more likely to vote Democratic and to identify themselves a “liberal” or “progressive.” Republicans (66%) and Bush voters (66%) were nearly twice as likely as Democrats (38%) and Kerry voters (38%) to say that religion was very important to them. Protestants (52%) were appreciably more likely than Catholics (40%) to say their religion was very important in deciding their vote for president, and those saying this were in fact almost twice as likely (56%: 34%) to vote Bush and to be Republicans (61%: 33%). When we examine religion and the vote with the categories of “evangelical” or religious “conservative” (as contrasted with “moderate” and “liberal”) the Republican and Bush advantages approach 3:1.

The Pace Post-Election Survey of First-Time voters corroborates the importance of religion to the electorate, reporting that four in ten of the new voters say they attend religious services at least once a week with an additional 16 percent saying at least once or twice a month. A large percentage of first time voters (39%) consider themselves “born-again” or “evangelical.”

When we compare the “conservatives” and “liberals” and “progressives” on what they thought were the primary moral issues at stake in the election we find, as conventional political analyses prepares us to, an almost dichotomous selection that pits “family values” items against “justice” items. The Zogby poll gave half of their respondents an open-ended questionnaire asking them what their major moral issue was and half a list that specified six moral issues asking them to select one: the war in Iraq, poverty, health care, abortion, same sex marriage, preventing stem cell research. A plurality (42%) chose the Iraqi War, half of the Kerry voters compared to less than one-third of Bush voters. Only 5 percent chose either poverty or health care, while 13 percent picked abortion and 9 percent same sex marriage. Catholics were more likely (17%:14%) than Protestants to cite abortion while Protestants were more likely (12%:8%) than Catholics to say same sex marriages. It’s important to note that frequent church attendance greatly impacted on these choices of most important moral issue, 31 percent saying abortion and 19 percent same sex marriage. So while overall voters nominated the Iraqi war as the key moral issue in the election, those who most frequently attended church services picked either abortion or same sex marriages, the chief politically contested components of the familiar term “family-values”. The Pace post-election survey found that 66 percent of new voters said abortion affected their vote and, indeed, over half (54%) chose to describe themselves as “pro-life,” with 43 percent saying “pro-choice.” The authors added that pro-life supporters were far more likely than pro-choice to translate their convictions into votes.

THE PEACE AND JUSTICE/ FAMILY VALUES CHOICES AS POLITICAL DICHOTOMIES

When we compare those who call themselves conservative with those calling themselves liberal the differences in their ranking of key moral issues approaches the dichotomous. Asked about “the most urgent moral problem in American culture,” a majority of conservatives say abortion (30%) or same sex marriage (26%). The majority of liberals (61%) and progressives (58%) say poverty and economic justice. Political party and voting choice simply repeat these rankings. Over half of the Republicans nominated abortion (33%) or same sex marriage (24%) while most Democrats (58%) said poverty and economic justice. Only one percent of Kerry voters said abortion was the most urgent problem, while only 5 percent of Republican voters picked poverty and economic justice.

Catholic Social Thought comprehensively includes as important moral concerns the issues dichotomized in these voting patterns which pit family values against social justice. The consistent ethic of life, first thematized by the late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin and now the teaching of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, explicitly links abortion and euthanasia with peace and justice concerns, grounding them in respect for the sanctity of life, the dignity of each person, and the pursuit of the common good. The American Catholic voter respectful of this comprehensive social teaching finds neither of the presently constructed political parties a suitable political home. The voting dilemma is complicated by those who argue that abortion directly and immediately threatens the foundational value of human life and thus required, in the last election, a vote for Bush who expressed sympathy for reversing Roe and against Kerry who explicitly endorsed Roe. Before some reflections on the political translations of a comprehensive Catholic social teaching we should return to survey data to examine more closely what seems to be a political rock of dichotomization that dooms as politically implausible a comprehensive social teaching and especially its expression as a consistent ethic of life. The political dichotomies might not adequately express the more complicated preferences of American voters.

THE POTENTIAL OF A COMPREHENSIVE SOCIAL TEACHING IN A TIME OF POLARIZATION.

The 2004 Fourth National Survey of Religion and Politics contains more categories of religion and results in more nuance than other voting surveys. For example, to the question whether “homosexuals should have the same rights as other Americans,” two-thirds agreed, one-third disagreed and one-sixth held no opinion. Compared to surveys taken in other presidential years (1992, 1996, 2000) this represents an increase from about one-half to three-fifths. But while American voters are increasingly likely to endorse equal rights for homosexuals, they do not yet include a redefinition of marriage (only 27%) within this equality. In other words, American voters are more complicated than a “pro-gay” or “pro-marriage” terminology captures.

The question of abortion rights shows even more nuance. As has been well noted and for a long time, American voters support neither an unqualified legal right to abortion nor an unqualified rejection of all legal abortions. A little more than a third of voters (35%) agreed with the absolutist pro-choice position that abortion should be “legal and up to the woman to decide.” About one quarter of evangelical Protestants, a third of Catholics, and two-fifths of Protestants held this position; by contrast, about two thirds of atheists/ agnostics did. But the absolutist no legal abortion position fared even worse. Indeed, only a third of “traditionalist evangelicals” and a quarter of “traditionalist Catholics” said “abortion should always be illegal.” The majority of voters say that abortion should be legal but with some restrictions. If there were an imaginative moral and political effort to achieve legislation that made efficacious the notoriously unfulfilled Clinton campaign phrase that abortion should be “safe, legal, and rare” a large majority of voters, the data suggest, would sign on. The Zogby, the Fourth National Survey of Religion and Politics, and the Pace new voters post election surveys all find that any recent change in this four decade old moral-political abortion contestation is more in the pro-life than in the pro-choice direction, but only in small increments.

In terms of a morally aware and politically adept approach to abortion, the Zogby post- election survey asked some questions that are important for some politically active right-to-lifers and Catholic leadership. During the last campaign a handful of bishops not only called for the exclusion of communion from Catholic officeholders and seekers who supported legal abortion rights but also from Catholics who knowingly voted for them. ³ Zogby asked (the data is given only for Catholic voters) whether they would be more likely to vote for Bush or Kerry given that “Some conservative groups informed Catholic voters that certain issues, like abortion and stem cell research, were non-negotiable.” Most Catholic voters said the claim of the political non-negotiability of abortion and stem cell research made “no difference.” The surprise is that more Catholics, a quarter, said this absolute conflation of morality and politics moved them toward a Kerry vote than toward a Bush vote, about one-fifth. ⁴ Another statistical irony is that Catholic Bush voters were far more likely (65%:45%) to say that the non-negotiable claim made no difference in their votes.

But the Zogby data also present difficulties for those Catholics seeking a political impact for a more comprehensive social teaching. Catholic voters were asked to respond to the statement: “Some progressive Catholic groups told voters that Catholics should look beyond one issue to consider church teaching on justice and peace.” Similar to the abortion question, most Catholics, about two-thirds, said “no difference.” But those who listened were twice as likely (26%:12%) to vote Kerry. This included young voters (36%: 6%) and those who said they prayed daily (28%:15%).

THE POSSIBILITIES OF A COMPREHENSIVE SOCIAL TEACHING ATTENUATING POLITICIZED MORAL DICHOTOMIES

The data within the surveys show the inadequacy of the usual political tags of conservative, liberal and progressive. None of these labels, for example, adequately captures the complicated attitudes about abortion and homosexual rights discussed above. Voters themselves resist these labels. Only about 20 percent of voters are willing to self-identify as liberal, and only slightly more as conservative. The Pace survey of new voters found that while new voters were about as likely to call themselves Democrats (37%) as Republicans (36%), they were more likely to call themselves conservative (37%) than liberal (29%). O’Beirne astutely observes that more Catholics call themselves Conservative than Republican because “there’s still a Catholic discomfit with the Republican brand name”. ⁵ When asked, “What is more important: improving government services in education and health care, even if it means higher spending, or cutting taxes and reducing government spending?” Catholic Republicans (41%) were more likely than other Republicans to choose higher spending rather than cutting taxes and government spending. ⁶

The National Survey of Religion and Politics shows a general voter willingness to favor economic policies closer to the Democratic than the Republican platforms. One-half agreed “The government should spend more to fight hunger and poverty even if it means higher taxes on the middle class,” while only one-third disagreed. When taxes are specified as progressive, the percent favoring government antipoverty policies increased. When asked whether “The government should spend more to fight hunger and poverty even if it means higher taxes on the wealthy” 60 percent agreed while only one-fifth disagreed.

A ready inference from such data suggests that the greater willingness of voters to call themselves “conservative” rather than “liberal” is that, in recent times, liberal now suggests “social liberal,” as in pro-choice and gay marriage, rather than the older notion of pro-family economic policies such as health care, economic justice, minimum wage increases, paid family leaves, etc. To many voters, the term liberal is no longer economically progressive. To get closer to what voters might actually be thinking as they are asked to identify their political ideology, future surveys would do well to distinguish between fiscal liberals and cultural liberals.

In terms of a comprehensive Catholic Social Thought two more items from “The American Religious Landscape and Political Attitudes” survey deserve notice. Pope John Paul II, and less forcefully, the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, found the American invasion of Iraq in violation of just war criteria. But when asked whether “The United States can engage in preemptive war,” 62 percent agreed. The highest agreement was by Evangelical Protestants, but Catholic respondents were not different from the sample whole. Much cultural, moral, and political work needs to be done before voters consider whether the violence of abortion is connected with the violence of war.

THE CATHOLIC VOTE AND THE PROSPECTS FOR THE IMPACT OF A COMPREHENSIVE CATHOLIC THOUGHT

Identifying with the party’s attention to poor Americans and the view that government has active responsibilities for the common good, American Catholics since the time of the Roosevelt New Deal of the 1930s have been far more likely to consider themselves as Democrats rather than Republicans. With important qualifications regarding Hispanic and Black Catholics, this party-religious affiliation overlap has greatly shrunk. It remains true that, compared to white Protestants, Catholics are, by 8 to 12 percentage points, more likely to declare themselves Democrats. But younger Catholics are about as likely to self-describe as Republican as Democrat and, as with all Americans, the number of Independents increases. Efforts to find Catholics voting against their own class or economic interests do not encourage optimism about their receptivity toward the themes of a comprehensive Catholic Social Thought, such as the priority of the poor, the increasing skepticism that any war can be just, that human dignity requires appropriate resources of health care, housing, education and employment. After their historical review, Leege and Mueller ⁷ say that religiosity never has been a powerful predictor of the measures of social justice. In fact, they describe as “very compelling” the likelihood ⁸ that the factors behind the 1968 to 1992 Catholic shift from massively Democratic to increased Republican party identification “were negative feeling on race and the role of government as an engine for change and equality, especially among younger Catholic men resenting tax transfers and racial and gender favoritism.”

Dionne is more sympathetic and more hopeful about the impact of Catholic Social Thought. He achieves his hopefulness through what he calls a sensible realism about religion and the reality of politics and human motivation.

• There have always been sharp limits to the impact of the church’s formal teachings on the laity …We shouldn’t be overly depressed if there is not always a link between what the church says and what many Catholics do or believe … While Catholics are like all other voters in that they are powerfully influenced by demographic and especially social class factors, this does not mean that Catholic teaching is irrelevant to what Catholics think and how they vote ⁹

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