White Catholics, Donald Trump and the 2016 Presidential Election

White Catholic voters have provided crucial assistance to Donald Trump's bid for the GOP presidential nomination. The clearest sign of that came during the recent primaries held in five northeastern states, which Trump swept on the strength of his white Catholic supporters.
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NEW YORK, NY - MAY 03: Republican presidential front runner Donald Trump speaks to supporters and the media at Trump Tower in Manhattan following his victory in the Indiana primary on May 03, 2016 in New York, New York. Trump beat rival Ted Cruz decisively in a contest that many analysts believe was the last chance for any other Republican candidate to catch Trump in the delegate count. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
NEW YORK, NY - MAY 03: Republican presidential front runner Donald Trump speaks to supporters and the media at Trump Tower in Manhattan following his victory in the Indiana primary on May 03, 2016 in New York, New York. Trump beat rival Ted Cruz decisively in a contest that many analysts believe was the last chance for any other Republican candidate to catch Trump in the delegate count. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

White Catholic voters have provided crucial assistance to Donald Trump's bid for the GOP presidential nomination. The clearest sign of that came during the recent primaries held in five northeastern states, which Trump swept on the strength of his white Catholic supporters. Victories there provided him with the momentum needed to win decisively in Indiana this week, thereby knocking out Trump's last two rivals for the GOP nomination (Ted Cruz and John Kasich).

What explains the strong appeal of a nominal Presbyterian such as Trump to white Catholics? In part this has to do with where Trump is from. He grew up in Queens, a heavily Catholic borough within New York City. When he was growing up there during the 1950's and '60's, Queens' Catholic population was heavily white, not Latino. And so part of Trump's ability to establish a connection with white, Catholic voters stems from the simple fact of familiarity; he grew up around a lot of them.

Strengthening that sense of connection was the nature of his father's business. Fred Trump's construction firm during Donald's childhood made a lot of money building middle-class apartments in Brooklyn, the Bronx and Queens. Many, perhaps most, of those apartments housed young families of veterans, either of World War II or Korea. These families were often white Catholic ones of upper-working-class or lower-middle-class background. Donald Trump learned the construction business by working for his father, which brought him into contact with lots of white, Catholic families of that sort. All the indications are that the Trumps liked them, and related well to them. Even Donald Trump's vision of the good life now that he is very rich seems to be a kind of lower-middle-class city kid's vision of wealth more than an old-money one. In that sense, billionaire Trump has kept his connection to the families his father served even as Donald has moved into the more rarefied world of elite Manhattan.

Helping establish and maintain that rapport was the nominal nature of the Trumps' Presbyterian affiliation. They occasionally attended Marble Collegiate Church in the 1950's and '60's, but there is no sign that Presbyterianism as such was something central to Donald Trump's life. Instead, he seems to have gone to church the way so many kids did then, which was out of his parents' sense that some exposure to religion would help ground the Trump children in morally traditional ways. Donald Trump's lack of familiarity with biblical texts, while disconcerting to many strongly religious people, sends a different kind of message to more secular white Catholics - that he is a nominal Protestant who pays little attention to denominational differences among Christians.

And then there is Donald Trump's strongly positive message about the era in which he grew up, which also resonates with many white Catholics. Trump is nostalgic for that time, when Americans of ordinary income residing in major metropolitan areas (which describes most white Catholics then) could still afford to live comfortably. That nostalgia for the 1950's and '60's also extends beyond strictly economic considerations. The popular culture of that era was also much more in sync with white Catholics then. Movies, radio and television were tightly regulated then in terms of content, which tended to produce a picture of the world that reinforced rather than undermined what morally traditional white Catholic parents were teaching their children about values and behavior.

That had implications, too, for crime and attitudes toward authority more generally. The urban police forces of the 1950's and '60's tended to be heavily composed of white Catholics, who emphasized crime control and respect for law and order much more than the protection of the rights of those accused of wrongdoing. That set of policing priorities tended to contribute to a low level of street crime in white Catholic urban America then. Strengthening that feeling of neighborhood safety among urban white Catholics was strict residential racial segregation.

The 1950s and '60s was also an era more influenced by white Catholics politically. Having long been active in American politics but in a second-tier role, Catholic politicians finally broke through to the top during Donald Trump's childhood. The election of the nation's first Catholic president in November 1960 was the clearest signal of that change.

And then there is the immigration issue, which has been so central to Donald Trump's presidential campaign. Trump's nostalgia for the 1950's and '60's includes a fondness for an era when immigration was low, and whites of southern and eastern European background, many of them Catholic, became steadily more assimilated into the rest of the country's white majority. It was a time when tensions among whites based on ethnicity and religion declined, as more and more of them entered an ever bigger and more economically secure middle class. That was especially true in New York City, which historically had been the biggest single receiver of immigrants to the USA. Perhaps the best illustration of just how different that era can be seen in the simple matter of language. The fraction of New York City residents who spoke English as a native language was probably higher then than at any other time in modern U.S. history. Another telling indicator is economic competition for lower-wage jobs from immigrants. There was probably less of that in the New York City of the 1950s and '60s than at any other time in the twentieth century.

Of course, not everything about Donald Trump appeals to white, Catholic voters. His multiple marriages bother more morally traditional Catholics, as does his at-times uncouth remarks and his palpable lack of humility. Partly compensating for those flaws, though, is Trump's overtly patriarchal style, which resonates well with many American Catholics, and older male ones especially. Trump is a man's man, of a sort, and the image of masculine strength that he projects is refreshing to many Catholic males who are tired of images in the popular culture of doofus dads and "boy men."

Donald Trump's appeal to white Catholic voters has implications well beyond his successful quest for the GOP presidential nomination. Although historically a heavily Democratic group, white Catholics since the 1970's have emerged as a major swing demographic in the American electorate. Since 1980, white Catholic voter preferences have tended to predict accurately the outcome in presidential elections. And so whether Donald Trump can compete against Hillary Clinton successfully this fall will likely depend in no small measure on his ability to keep connecting with that kind of voter.

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