One of the leading myths about the 2004 election is that George W. Bush won mostly because of massive support from evangelicals.
Support of evangelicals wouldn’t have been nearly enough without his big victory among conservative Catholics and mainline Protestants. In the last few elections, we’ve seen the birth of a “Religious Conservative Alliance” that spanned different denominations, with Catholic conservatives behaving similarly to Protestant conservatives.
That may be changing. A series of new polls show that while Barack Obama has made very little headway among evangelicals – even moderate evangelicals — practicing Catholics are now distinguishing themselves from their evangelical allies.

In 2004, for instance, vast majorities of traditional white evangelicals (85%) and traditional white Catholics (70%) thought the war in Iraq was “justified”; since then, conservative white evangelical support for the war has declined somewhat to 76.8% but conservative Catholic support has plummeted to 46.8%, according to the National Survey of Religion and Politics conducted by John Green at the University of Akron. (By “traditional,” Mr. Green means those who attend church more and hold theologically traditional views).
Look, too, at gay marriage. In 2004, white observant evangelicals and Catholics were kindred spirits: 90% of these evangelicals supported “traditional marriage” and 72.9% of traditional Catholics did. But while evangelicals still hold those views, the ground has shifted tremendously for Catholics. About 86.6% of traditional white evangelicals still believe only in traditional marriage, while 58.4% of traditional white Catholics now do.
The percentage of traditional white evangelicals who want stricter environmental regulation fell 15 points while the percentage of traditional white Catholics went up 3.7 points!
Issues That Matter Most
Finally, this same divergence appears in the questions about which issues matter most. In 2004, 10% of evangelicals listed the economy as the top priority; 17% of traditional Catholics did. This time, 33% of evangelicals do and 56.9% of Catholics do. There was a seven-point difference between the groups in 2004 and a 23 point spread in 2008.
Why would this be? To some extent Catholics never stopped being “cross pressured,” as the political scientists like to say. That means some issues tug them in one direction and some in another.
During the most of the last two decades, the issues that drew them in the Republican direction – crime, welfare, abortion – were dominant. Now, the issues that have always tugged in the Democratic direction – the economy and health care – have become significantly more important.
The Iraq war also may have ruptured their connection to the conservative coalition. Traditional Catholics supported the Iraq war even though their beloved pope, John Paul II, did not. Liberal Catholics oppose the church all the time, but bucking the church was an uncomfortable position for many traditional Catholics. After the war went sour, they have lost some trust in the broader conservative coalition.
Social Policies and Catholic Teaching
The most famous example is Douglas Kmiec, the conservative, pro-life Reagan administration official who is backing Sen. Obama this year, in part because of his views on social justice issues. He praised Sen. Obama for his focus on “the plight of the marginalized and unemployed worker, the uninsured, the widowed mother grieving over a son lost in Iraq.” The Obama campaign, especially through Sen. Obama’s running mate Joe Biden, has made great efforts to connect their liberal social policies with Catholic social teaching.
In a way, it’s their very Catholic-ness that may be putting Mass-attending Catholics in a difficult political spot this year. Many less-observant Catholics don’t seem particularly influenced by church teachings on politics but traditional Catholics may be different, and these days, the church teachings on everything except abortion tend to be more liberal. “If you are going to mass regularly, no matter where you are on the political spectrum, you can’t avoid hearing what the bishops and the Pope are saying on the war, immigration, and the environment,” says Alexia Kelley, Executive Director, Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good, a progressive Catholic group.
This doesn’t necessarily translate into Catholic votes for Sen. Obama. There’s still plenty that traditional Catholics dislike about him, including his views on abortion. The Catholic bishops continue to criticize pro-choice politicians, including Sen. Biden.
Though Sen. Obama is still doing better among white Catholics than Sen. John Kerry did in 2004, the gap has closed in recent weeks.
But what is clear is that conservative Catholics are no longer marching lockstep with evangelicals.
Reprinted from WSJ.com’s Political Perceptions area.