"Marie Gayte and Gerald P. Fogarty, in different ways engage more particularly Catholic questions concerning the impacts of all these decades of culture war on the church in the United States. ... Indeed, as much now as since Catholics came as immigrants to dominate social life in the United States at the dawn of the twentieth century, to understand U.S. national politics we must understand Catholics. This volume makes that case, and makes it well." (Steven P. Millies, American Catholic Studies, Vol. 134 (3), 2023)
Chapter 1: Introduction: The Catholic Vote in the United States (Mark J. Rozell)
Part I:Political Parties and Ideologies
Chapter 2: Catholic Patterns in the American Left (Amandine Barb)
Chapter 3: Catholic Colonization of the American Right (Blandine Chelini-Pont)
Chapter 4: Catholics and Evangelicals: Does Donald Trump’s Loss Mean the End of the Religious Right? (Neal J. Young)
Part II: The Bishops and the Holy See
Chapter 5: The U.S. Catholic Bishops: From Separationism to Public Intervention (Marie Gayte)
Chapter 6: The Holy See and the Catholic Community in the 2020 Presidential Election (Gerald Fogarty)
Part III: Catholics and U.S. Elections
Chapter 7: The Catholic Vote in the Election of Donald J. Trump in 2016 (Douglas Kmiec)
Chapter 8: The Catholic Vote in the Election of Joe Biden in 2020 (Mark Gray)
Chapter 9: The Catholic Latino Vote in 2020 (Olivier Richomme)
Chapter 10: “Can We Get the Catholic Vote”?: The Effects of Catholic Nominees in Presidential Elections (Ted G. Jelen and Clyde Wilcox)
Chapter 11: Catholics and the Future of US Politics (Chelini-Pont, Gayte, Rozell)
Marie Gayte is Associate Professor of U.S. History at Toulon University, France
Blandine Chelini-Pont is Professor of Contemporary History at Aix-Marseille University, France
Mark J. Rozell is Dean of the Schar School of Policy and Government and Ruth D. and John T. Hazel Chair in Public Policy at George Mason University, USA
This book examines the evolution of the Catholic vote in the United States and the role of Catholic voters in the 2020 national elections more specifically. There is a paucity of academic books on Catholic voters, even though Catholics comprise nearly one-quarter of the US national popular vote and commonly are called the “swing vote.” Scholars of religion and politics tend to focus heavily on the evangelical right, thus overlooking the powerful influence of Catholic voters who, by the accounts in this volume, were critical to the presidential election of President Joe Biden. To understand the intersection of religion, politics, and election outcomes in the US requires an analysis of the role played by Catholics. Among key topics covered in this volume are whether Biden’s Catholic identity was key to his achieving a larger percentage of the Catholic vote than achieved by Hillary Clinton in 2016; the role of the Catholic bishops in US elections; the critically important role of the Catholic Latino vote in US elections; the conservative Catholic and evangelical alliance in US politics; and the distinctive politics of social justice Catholics and socially conservative Catholics.
Marie Gayte is Associate Professor of U.S. History at Toulon University, France
Blandine Chelini-Pont is Professor of Contemporary History at Aix-Marseille University, France
Mark J. Rozell is Dean of the Schar School of Policy and Government and Ruth D. and John T. Hazel Chair in Public Policy at George Mason University, USA