Exit polls: Trump dominates among Catholic voters on his way to victory

CV NEWS FEED // Multiple exit polls show that President-elect Donald Trump won the Catholic vote by a wide margin in Tuesday’s election – posting the strongest performance among Catholics for a Republican nominee since Ronald Reagan.

In the past several election cycles, Catholics as a whole have emerged as an important swing voting bloc – and the candidate who wins their vote has almost always gone on to win the presidency. In 2020, Joe Biden bested Trump among Catholics by five points, per Gallup.

One exit poll from The Washington Post (WaPo) found that Catholics across the country backed Trump over failed Democratic nominee Kamala Harris by a landslide margin of 15 points. 

According to that poll, Catholics, who comprised 22% of the 2024 electorate, broke for Trump – with 56% voting for the former president compared to 41% who backed Harris.

Notably, per the WaPo poll, Trump’s vote share of Catholics was only six points short of the 62% by which he won Protestants, largely a traditional Republican voting bloc.   

An NBC News exit poll taken throughout the seven battleground states as well as Florida, Ohio, and Texas found Trump won Catholics by an identical 15-point margin, 56% to 41%.

The Associated Press’ AP VoteCast also found that Trump won the 2024 Catholic vote, albeit by a smaller margin than the WaPo and NBC polls showed.

As Catholic News Agency (CNA) reported, the VoteCast showed that “Trump won the Catholic vote with about 52% compared with Harris’ 45%.”

CatholicVote reported on X (formerly Twitter) Wednesday morning that, per FOX News exit polling, Trump won the Catholic vote in the key swing state of Michigan by 20 points. AP called that Trump won the state’s 16 electoral votes Wednesday afternoon.

Furthermore, CatholicVote noted that Trump won among Catholics in Florida by a whopping 29 points. The president-elect carried the former swing state by 13 points, the strongest performance for a Republican there since 1988. 

Catholic voters also likely proved instrumental in the defeat of Florida’s proposed pro-abortion Amendment 4, which fell short by three points on Election Day.

Per FOX exit polling, Trump also won Catholics in North Carolina by 17 points, in Wisconsin by 16 points, and in Pennsylvania by 14 points.

The margins among Catholic voters were closer in the Sun Belt states of Arizona, Georgia, and Nevada, where a large percentage of Catholics are Hispanic.

Again per FOX polling, Trump won among Georgia Catholics by 7 points, among Nevada Catholics by 6 points, and lost among Arizona Catholics by one point.

“The numbers we are seeing are eye-popping,” CatholicVote President Brian Burch said in response to the exit polling. “Make no mistake, we have achieved a triumphant victory for Catholics in America. Trump and JD Vance scored a historic victory Tuesday night, thanks to the Catholic vote.”

“Harris’ anti-Catholic record was impossible to ignore, and Trump-Vance made it a key issue down the stretch, with repeated direct appeals to Catholics at rallies and in the media,” the CatholicVote president noted:

CatholicVote spent over $10 million dollars rallying over 2 million Catholics across 9 states since January. We deployed full-time staff across the country and recruited over 5,000 volunteers. We built a custom data model and contacted over 2 million Catholics.

>> EARLIER THIS WEEK: YOUTUBE LIMITS CATHOLICVOTE’S ANTI-HARRIS AD <<

Columnist Guy Benson reported on X that Trump won Catholics by nine points.

In his post, Benson indicated that possible explanations for Harris’ massive underperformance among Catholics for a Democratic nominee include her heavily scrutinized decision to not attend a beloved Catholic charity dinner in person, and her vehement pro-abortion and anti-religious freedom stances.

He wrote:

Harris snubbing the Al Smith dinner was one thing, but what moved several Catholic voters I personally know (people who were intending to vote third party) was Harris’ answer on NBC about abortion. She would force Catholic hospitals to perform abortion. No exemptions. Her anti-1A radicalism moved votes.