{"id":538,"date":"2008-04-22T20:33:12","date_gmt":"2008-04-22T20:33:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/godometer\/2008\/04\/obama-loses-pennsylvania-catho.html"},"modified":"2008-04-22T20:33:12","modified_gmt":"2008-04-22T20:33:12","slug":"obama-loses-pennsylvania-catho","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2008\/04\/obama-loses-pennsylvania-catho.html","title":{"rendered":"Obama Loses Pennsylvania Catholics Big"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"obamasign.jpg\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/211\/import\/obamasign.jpg\" width=\"130\" \/>The Obama campaign just fired off an email memo whose title begins: &#8220;Obama Overperforms Among Catholics&#8230;&#8221; Technically, that&#8217;s right. But Hillary Clinton nonetheless <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnn.com\/ELECTION\/2008\/primaries\/results\/epolls\/#PADEM\">trampled Obama among Catholics today in Pennsylvania<\/a>, where they accounted for roughly a third of the Democratic vote.<br \/>\nAccording to exit polls, Clinton won Pennsylvania Catholics 69-percent to 31-percent. That&#8217;s even worse than Obama did among Catholics last month in Ohio&#8217;s primary, where he took 36-percent of Catholics, compared to  63-percent for Clinton.<br \/>\nHow could the Obama campaign argue that it &#8220;outperformed&#8221; among Catholics? It cites a Quinnipiac poll from March 18 that had Obama trailing Clinton among Catholics 70-percent to 24-percent, which means he narrowed Clinton&#8217;s lead today. God-o-Meter noted earlier today that the margins of error involved <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/godometer\/2008\/04\/obama-and-catholics-evidence-o.html\">cast some doubt on those claims<\/a>. Even ignoring the margin of error, however, Obama&#8217;s apparent gain among Catholics doesn&#8217;t change the fact that they&#8217;re his Achilles&#8217; heel in the rust belt states.<br \/>\nDefending itself against allegations that Obama has a Catholic electoral problem, his campaign argues in tonight&#8217;s email memo that it&#8217;s unfair to treat Catholics as a voting bloc:<br \/>\n&#8220;[P]undits will often discuss the \u201cCatholic vote\u201d in monolithic terms, suggesting that American Catholics vote in blocs.  From universities to think tanks, this notion has been refuted.  There are nearly 70 million American Catholics, young and old, rich and poor, white, African American, Latino, Asian.  When other important factors are considered, often the impact of this vote becomes difficult to assess.&#8221;<br \/>\nMaybe Obama&#8217;s religious strategists are right about that. It would certainly help explain why the campaign&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/godometer\/2008\/04\/obamas-catholic-committee-the.html\">vigorous Catholic outreach program<\/a> has seemed to yield such a scrawny return at the polls today.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><br \/>\n7<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Obama campaign just fired off an email memo whose title begins: &#8220;Obama Overperforms Among Catholics&#8230;&#8221; Technically, that&#8217;s right. But Hillary Clinton nonetheless trampled Obama among Catholics today in Pennsylvania, where they accounted for roughly a third of the Democratic vote. According to exit polls, Clinton won Pennsylvania Catholics 69-percent to 31-percent. That&#8217;s even worse&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":50,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-538","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-barack-obama"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Obama Loses Pennsylvania Catholics Big - God-O-Meter<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2008\/04\/obama-loses-pennsylvania-catho.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Obama Loses Pennsylvania Catholics Big - God-O-Meter\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The Obama campaign just fired off an email memo whose title begins: &#8220;Obama Overperforms Among Catholics&#8230;&#8221; Technically, that&#8217;s right. But Hillary Clinton nonetheless trampled Obama among Catholics today in Pennsylvania, where they accounted for roughly a third of the Democratic vote. According to exit polls, Clinton won Pennsylvania Catholics 69-percent to 31-percent. That&#8217;s even worse&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2008\/04\/obama-loses-pennsylvania-catho.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"God-O-Meter\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-04-22T20:33:12+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/godometer\/files\/import\/obamasign.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"dgilgoff\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Obama Loses Pennsylvania Catholics Big - God-O-Meter","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2008\/04\/obama-loses-pennsylvania-catho.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Obama Loses Pennsylvania Catholics Big - God-O-Meter","og_description":"The Obama campaign just fired off an email memo whose title begins: &#8220;Obama Overperforms Among Catholics&#8230;&#8221; Technically, that&#8217;s right. But Hillary Clinton nonetheless trampled Obama among Catholics today in Pennsylvania, where they accounted for roughly a third of the Democratic vote. According to exit polls, Clinton won Pennsylvania Catholics 69-percent to 31-percent. That&#8217;s even worse&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2008\/04\/obama-loses-pennsylvania-catho.html","og_site_name":"God-O-Meter","article_published_time":"2008-04-22T20:33:12+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/godometer\/files\/import\/obamasign.jpg"}],"author":"dgilgoff","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2008\/04\/obama-loses-pennsylvania-catho.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2008\/04\/obama-loses-pennsylvania-catho.html","name":"Obama Loses Pennsylvania Catholics Big - God-O-Meter","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2008\/04\/obama-loses-pennsylvania-catho.html#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2008\/04\/obama-loses-pennsylvania-catho.html#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/godometer\/files\/import\/obamasign.jpg","datePublished":"2008-04-22T20:33:12+00:00","dateModified":"2008-04-22T20:33:12+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/#\/schema\/person\/b7e97412c87d7a3b866e9972cc090db4"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2008\/04\/obama-loses-pennsylvania-catho.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2008\/04\/obama-loses-pennsylvania-catho.html"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2008\/04\/obama-loses-pennsylvania-catho.html#primaryimage","url":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/godometer\/files\/import\/obamasign.jpg","contentUrl":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/godometer\/files\/import\/obamasign.jpg"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2008\/04\/obama-loses-pennsylvania-catho.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Obama Loses Pennsylvania Catholics Big"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/","name":"God-O-Meter","description":"A scientific measure of God-talk in the elections","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/#\/schema\/person\/b7e97412c87d7a3b866e9972cc090db4","name":"dgilgoff","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/858\/858da2927809a8352512cd24712c020cx96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/858\/858da2927809a8352512cd24712c020cx96.jpg","caption":"dgilgoff"},"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/author\/dgilgoff"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/538","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/50"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=538"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/538\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=538"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=538"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}