I know there’s no CATHOLIC VOTE. There’s too many different kinds of Catholics. And I can’t say it surprised me a bit to see that Romney beat Santorum among Catholics in yesterday’s Michigan primary. (Ace has the poll breakdown.)
Romney beat Santorum among Catholics 44% -37%.
To get any meaningful breakdown of “Catholics” in a poll you have to ask specific questions about Mass attendance. I’d bet that among Catholic who attend Mass once a week or more, Santorum did a lot better. To ask Catholics to self identify as Catholics and just leave it there is about as effective as asking for self identified good looking people. There’s a lot of folks who say they’re good looking people who just aren’t just as there are a lot of folks who identify as “Catholic” and just aren’t -at least in any meaningful way that affects their decision making.
One surprising thing from the poll was that among those who self identified as “conservative” Romney won that group as well 43% – 41%. The only way I can see that is that they just think that Romney has a better chance to beat Obama and that’s their main goal.
It makes me think of Hunter S. Thompson who said he voted for Bill Clinton but said he never believed one word that came out of Clinton’s mouth other than that he could beat President George H.W. Bush. That was enough for him. I suspect that at least some of Romney’s support is the same.
I even heard someone on Philly talk radio the other day say they think Santorum would be a better President than Romney but Romney will be a better candidate than Santorum. If only we were voting for candidate in chief. Hey, isn’t that really what we did last time. How’d that turn out for the country?
