Hispanic Catholics Are Not Conservative

With Pope Francis' "green encyclical" due this summer, the Catholic propaganda is out in full force -- most notably at "conservative" websites. Some articles ask the question: "Pope Francis, Green Conservative?"

There is a debate as to whether or not Pope Francis is Hispanic, but he clearly represents Hispanics -- and Hispanic Catholics are dominantly not conservative (same with libertarians -- if they were conservative, they would be conservatives, not liberatarians). Thus, we have another Trojan Horse movement up The Pew Research Center has been reliably monitoring voting patterns by religion for some time, and their results are unequivocal. In the 2000 and 2004 U.S. presidential elections, Hispanic Catholics voted 2:1 in favor of the Democratic candidates (Gore and Kerry, respectively) versus the Republican candidate (Bush 43). This should tell you everything you need to know about the inherent political views of most Hispanic Catholics, especially since Bush 43 was more of a centrist than a true conservative. In 2008, Hispanic Catholics voted overwhemingly for Obama (72 percent) over McCain (26 percent; another centrist Republican). Three-quarters of Hispanic Catholics voted for Obama over Romney in 2012. Among all Catholics, the majority voted Democrat in each presidential election since 2000 -- with the sole exception of 2004, whereby the vote split was very close between Kerry (47 percent) and Bush 43 (52 percent). Even white Catholics are almost evenly split between Democratic (40 to 47 percent) and Republican (52 to 59 percent) presidential candidates. Similarly, Jews are not generally conservative. From 70 to 80 percent of their vote has gone to the Democratic candidate since 2000. Only Mormons and white born-again/evangelicals are dominantly Republican voters (both about 80 percent in the 2000 through 2012 presidential elections).

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Hispanic Catholics nearly entirely (91 percent) support immigration reform with the view that "undocumented immigrants ... should be allowed to stay legally if they meet certain requirements." Nearly 60 percent of Hispanic Catholics believe it is a "bad thing" that "the number of undocumented immigrants deported from the U.S. has increased in the past few years." Hispanic Catholics also appear to be dominantly voting for the Democrats in Congressional elections, with support in the neighborhood of 2:1 for Democrats over Republicans. Only a small majority of all Catholics combined voted Republican. The same story exists in Canada. During the last federal election in 2011, 40 percent of Catholics voted for the far-left NDP, with another 16 percent going to the left-of-center Liberal Party. Eric Mang has conducted an interesting analysis of voting patterns by religion in Canada, and in it we find that most Canadian Catholics are not even socially conservative. As Mang notes:

"To test Catholic support for Liberals, I chose abortion and same-sex marriage as variables because both are proscribed by the Catholic Church. For example, in 1995, Pope John Paul II referred to abortion as an 'unspeakable crime'. In the 1988 election, Liberals received half of their support from Catholics. And in 1988, about half of regular church-going Catholics said that abortion should be permitted following medical consultation. At this time, Catholics mirrored the opinion of all Canadian respondents. It may be that the Canadian Catholic community is disassociated from many of the socially conservative pronouncements from the Vatican. During the 2004 federal election, Catholic support for the Liberal Party was still strong (43 percent) ... When the question of same-sex marriage was asked of Canada's various religious denominations, a majority of Protestants (68 percent) were opposed, while Catholics were evenly split: 50 percent opposed and 50 percent in favour."

Paul Fairie of the University of Calgary conducted an analysis of the 2007 Ontario provincial election, and concluded that Catholics were dominantly voting for left-of-center parties -- consistent with their long history in Canada of dominantly voting for the Liberal Party. In the UK, Ben Clements and Nick Spencer from the Theos Think Tank published a study showing that "Catholics generally have preferred to vote Labour, often by large margins, since 1959 (the exception being in 1979)." Catholics also fall into the more authoritarian/left-wing region compared to other religions when probed on their specific political views. Outside of America, Catholics are overwhelmingly liberal -- not conservative, and inside America, Hispanic Catholics are most certainly not conservative in their political views. To suggest otherwise would be ignoring decades of electoral data.