(ZENIT News / Washington, DC, 01.05.2024).- A survey showed that, in this electoral year, only 35% of American Catholic have a favourable opinion about President Joe Biden, whereas 64% express an opinion far from the President.
Pew Research Center published the survey’s data, which included interviews carried out at the end of February 2024 with 12,000 adult Americans. Biden, a Catholic, garnered a high rate of little acceptance among those that call themselves Catholics.
Neither is Biden’s Republican rival, former President Donald Trump, regarded favourable by the majority of the American Catholics surveyed.
Biden is slightly more popular; Trump, the Republican candidate, is accepted positively by 42% of Catholics, while 57% have a negative opinion of him.
Greg Smith, Pew’s associate research director of the survey “Religion and Politics before the U.S. Elections,” presented the research during the 2024 Annual Conference of the Religious News Association, which ended on April 28. White Catholics have a 54% favourable opinion of the former President. However, Trump is less popular among Hispanic Catholics: only 32% accept him. The country’s Catholic population numbers 52 million. According to Pew’s data, 57% of American Catholic adults are white and 33% are Hispanic.
Other data commented on by Greg Smith showed Catholics’ growing preference for the Republican Party; 35% of Hispanic Catholics also prefer it. However, the tendency to Republican affiliation among Hispanics is higher than that of white Catholics, with an uninterrupted rebound since 2020.
Perhaps Pew’s most important data is the marked difference in political affiliation among Catholics that go to Mass at least once a month or more, and those that don’t do so. Regardless of their ethnic group, Catholics that go to Mass monthly or more frequently identify more with the Republican Party by 61%.
Pew Research Center, a non-partisan entity that surveys public opinion, carries out demographic research and collects data on the social sciences, does not advocate in favour or against any political position.
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