Catholic voters favor Trump over Harris nationally and in swing states, exit polls show

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Nov 5, 2024 / 23:57 pm

The Catholic vote on Tuesday broke for former President Donald Trump by a large margin nationwide and within swing states in the 2024 presidential election, according to exit polls published by the Washington Post, the Associated Press, and NBC News. 

According to the Washington Post’s exit poll, Trump won the national Catholic vote by a 15-point margin: 56% to 41%. This shows a much larger victory for Trump among Catholic voters than the Post’s 2020 exit polls, which showed Trump with only a five-point lead above President Joe Biden, 52% to 47%. 

The shift represents a 10-point swing in favor of Trump from 2020 to 2024.

The Washington Post poll also found that 69% of voters who believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases voted for Harris, but Trump managed to win 28% of voters who held the same view. 

Trump also won 90% of voters who believe abortion should be illegal in all or most cases and Harris won 9% of voters who held that view. 

An exit poll from the Associated Press VoteCast showed Trump leading among Catholic voters, but by a smaller seven-point margin than the Post’s poll. According to the poll, Trump won the Catholic vote with about 52% compared to Harris’s 45%.

However, the poll also found that 46% of Catholic voters trusted Harris more on abortion policy, while only 36% trusted Trump more on that issue. About 10% trusted neither and 6% trusted both.

According to the poll, 61% of Catholic voters said abortion should be legal in all or most cases and only 38% said it should be illegal in all or most cases. It found that Catholic voters were evenly split on the question of whether abortion should be illegal after 15 weeks of pregnancy, with 49% favoring such a law and 49% opposing it. 

The poll found that Catholic voters trusted Trump more than Harris on immigration by a massive 25-point margin, 57% to 32%. It also found that Catholics trusted Trump more on the economy by a 19-point margin, 55% to 36%. 

According to the poll, 59% of Catholics were concerned that Harris was too extreme and 58% felt the same way about Trump. About 73% of Catholic voters said they were primarily voting to support their candidate, but 27% of Catholic voters said they were primarily voting to oppose the other candidate.

This shows Trump heavily outperforming earlier polls of Catholics. A poll conducted by Pew in September only showed the former president with a five-point lead over the vice president, beating her 52% compared to 47%. 

Catholic voters in 10 key swing states polled by NBC voted for Trump by a 15-point margin, with 56% of the vote going to the former president and only 41% going to Vice President Kamala Harris. 

Trump’s lead was slightly larger among white Catholic voters with 60% supporting the former president and 37% backing Harris. 

According to the poll, Catholics accounted for 22% of the voters in those states and white Catholics accounted for 15% of the voters.

The states included in the NBC poll were Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Wisconsin.

Both Trump and his running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, courted the Catholic vote heavily in the last few weeks of the election. In late October, Trump called Harris “destructive to Christianity” and said Catholics are “treated worse than anybody.” In that same week, Vance published an op-ed in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, accusing Harris of “prejudice against Catholics.” 

The race had yet to be called as of midnight on Tuesday, but the New York Times live forecast estimated that Trump has more than a 90% chance of winning the election.