How White Protestants and White Catholics Came Together Politically 

How White Protestants and White Catholics Came Together Politically 

In a new piece for CNN, Ronald Brownstein speaks with PRRI CEO Robert P. Jones on how conservative Catholics became aligned with the Republican Party. After years of being at political and societal odds, political realignment and demographic decline brought white Catholics and white Protestants together. “As the number of white Protestants began to shrink, they brought in white Catholics to this conservative Christian movement,” Jones says. They “got welded on as the Christian right picked up momentum and essentially needed more foot soldiers than White Protestants could provide at that stage in the game,” Jones explains. Despite this, Brownstein adds, there are differences in how the groups perceive President Donald Trump. “Public Religion Research Institute polling earlier in September found Trump’s favorability among white evangelicals was nearly 20 percentage points higher than his ratings among white Catholics,” he writes.

The New York Times Details President Trump’s Taxes

PRRI data from 2019 shows that 66% of Americans who approved of President Trump said he could do something to lose their approval. One-third (33%) said there is nothing he could do to lose their approval, including 42% of Republicans. On Sunday night The New York Times posted a lengthy piece detailing decades of President Trump’s tax activity. According to The New York Times, Trump has not paid income tax in 10 of the last 15 years, and the records show him losing more money than he has made.

Natalie Jackson Talks White Christians and Racial Justice

PRRI Research Director Natalie Jackson recently spoke with Ozy about how white Christians have reacted to recent racial justice protests. “White Christians are not very favorable toward the news … so the portrayal of racial justice and protests, the balance of violent versus peaceful protest, can really skew their opinions of it,” Jackson says. She notes that casual news viewers may not know that the racial justice movement has been largely peaceful. They “might not realize that, [they] might just see the chaos,” she says. PRRI data shows that among religious affiliations, white evangelical Protestants (72%) are most likely to say police killings of Black men are isolated incidents.

Analyzing Trump’s SCOTUS Pick of Amy Coney Barrett

Recent PRRI data shows that 35% of women have favorable views of President Trump, compared to 51% of women who view Joe Biden favorably. With the nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the U.S. Supreme Court, President Trump looks to bring in new support from women. “On the surface, Trump’s emphasis on picking a woman appeared to be an abrupt about-face from conventional Republican wisdom,” reports the 19th. Trump had previously released a mostly male list of potential Supreme Court nominees. But,“it’s not about being a woman, but about a campaign calculus, given where the numbers are,” explains PRRI Research Director Natalie Jackson. “It made a huge difference when the timing changed.”