My book, The American Catholic Voter: 200 Years of Political Impact, was published twenty years ago. That work tells the story of European Catholics who arrived on America’s shores in the 1800s and early 1900s with only the clothes on their backs, worked through their parishes and neighborhoods to overcome nativist bigotry, and became a significant voice in local, state, and national politics.

For most of the 20^th century, those white ethnics were an important voting bloc in the Democratic Party. But in the post-Vatican II culture wars, they flocked into the arms of Republicans Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan.

In the 21^st century, the white population in general, and white Catholics in particular, have been a declining electoral force. In 1970, 88 percent of the voting population was white; today it is 67 percent. Most of the Catholic “Nixon Democrats” have died and many of their children and grandchildren are “Cafeteria” Catholics who no longer respect the moral teachings of the Church.

But the Hispanic population (60 percent Catholic) has been growing by leaps and bounds. In 1970, there were 8.9 million Hispanics living in the United States; in 2022, that number hit 63.7 million – 19 percent of all Americans.

As for eligible Hispanic voters, in 1988 they totaled 7.7 million. Now it’s 36.2 million. That number is expected to grow annually because 29 percent of Hispanics are currently under eighteen. Hispanic voters are changing the nation’s political landscape. And that development was evident in this year’s presidential election.

To win, Trump needed more than the aging white Catholic vote in the seven swing states. His campaign, therefore, targeted working-class minorities, particularly Hispanics, to get him over the finish line. The campaign’s outreach paid off. Catholics provided the margins of victory in the closely contested swing states.

2024 Generic White and Hispanic Catholic Votes in Swing States

White Catholic Vote: 

Hispanic Catholic Vote:

(Polling data courtesy of McLaughlin Associates)

 As for the overall 2024 national generic Catholic vote, 58 percent supported Trump, 40 percent Harris. Even more striking, 66 percent of Catholics who attend Mass at least once a week, cast their ballot for Trump. Those who go to church only a few times a year voted 56 percent Trump.

The votes of white Catholics broke 61 percent Trump, 35 percent Harris. Hispanic Catholics supported Trump, 53 percent to 46 percent over Harris. In 2024, Trump garnered 45 percent of the total Hispanic vote versus 32 percent in 2020, and 29 percent in 2016. In 2020, Biden carried Hispanics by 41 points while Harris won by only 4 points – a whopping 54 percent swing.

The age distribution of the Hispanic vote is interesting. Forty-eight percent of Hispanics under the age of 44 cast their vote for Trump. Those over 65 voted 58 percent Trump, 41 percent Harris. Hispanic men voted 55 percent Trump, 43  percent Harris. Only Hispanic women went for Harris (60 percent, only 38 percent for Trump).

One extraordinary result: Starr County, Texas, the most Hispanic county in the nation (97 percent Mexican-American) had voted Democratic for 132 years. Trump beat Harris there 58 percent to 41 percent. Previously, they had cast 52 percent of their ballots for Biden and 79 percent for Hillary Clinton.

“It is no surprise that Latinos turned out in waves to elect President Donald Trump in this election,” Melvin Soto, a Republican media strategist, told the National Catholic Register. “They backed the candidate who supported our families, secured our communities, and gave Latinos the lowest unemployment and highest incomes in history. Most importantly, they backed the candidate who was fearful of God and did not tell them they were not welcome because of their faith. The election signifies a historic shift to a party that truly represented them ending their adherence to the Democrats.”

When asked by The New York Times about the shift in Hispanic voting patterns, Arizona’s US Senator-elect, Democrat Ruben Gallego, the son of Mexican and Columbian immigrants, was very candid. He said that his party had been taking Latinos for granted and failed to address their anxieties. “Latino men feel like their job is to provide security for their family-economic security and physical security. And when that is compromised, they start looking around.”

What I found most interesting is that no metropolis shifted more for Trump than my hometown, New York City. Harris carried the Big Apple by 37 points. Four years earlier Biden won by 54 points. In the working-class boroughs, support for Trump was up significantly:  Bronx +22 percent, Queens +22 percent, Brooklyn +14 percent.

Who cast those votes for Trump? Mostly Hispanics.

In the Bronx, for example, 57 percent of the residents are Hispanic. They migrated from over 23 countries located in Central and South America, as well as Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Cuba, and Puerto Rico. The largest ethnic blocs in the Bronx: Puerto Ricans 22 percent, Dominican Republicans 18 percent.  The income of 55 percent of households is under $50,000 annually.

In 2020, Biden garnered 355,000 votes in the Bronx. This year Harris received only 244,000. Trump’s total, however, jumped from 67,000 to 91,000. In Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s district, which encompasses western Queens and the South Bronx (and is 52 percent Hispanic), Trump received 33 percent of the vote versus 21 percent in 2020.

What is one to make of this electoral shift in New York?

Democratic Congressman Richie Torres, whose Bronx district is 55 percent Hispanic, expressed concern that his party is “increasingly captive to a college-educated far left that is in danger of causing us to fall out of touch with working-class voters.”

Public opinion polls confirm Torres’s observation. N.Y. Hispanics who supported Trump told pollsters they have had it with lousy schools, street gangs, drug pushers, and prostitutes in their neighborhoods, as well as new gender orthodoxies, inflation, and the “defund the police” movement.

Many Hispanics unhappy with public education and interested in the spiritual development of their children, are enrolling them in Catholic schools. A prime example is my alma mater, Msgr. McClancy Memorial High School in East Elmhurst, Queens. When I graduated from that working-class, all boys school in 1970, over 95 were  percent of students were of Irish, Italian, or Polish descent. Today McClancy is co-ed, a majority of the students are minorities, and it thrives academically. Over 90% percent go on to college. Colombians, Ecuadorians, and Venezuelans living in the surrounding neighborhoods have been making the necessary sacrifices to come up with the $10,000 annual tuition to save their children from the urban jungle.

In his study, New People and Old Neighborhoods, sociologist Louis Winnick has written that this “new wave of Hispanic immigrants [in N.Y.C.] has revitalized neighborhoods with an ethic of work and family that shrinks the Protestant ethic to apathy.”  These hard-working Hispanics have become a political force just as the white European Catholics did in the 19^th and 20^th centuries. And like their predecessors, they are deserting a Democratic Party that frowns upon their working-class values.

What is one to make of this political realignment? It means that Catholic voters still matter.

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