The Difference Between White Evangelicals And White Catholics On Election Day
(ANALYSIS) I keep a little list in the notes app on my phone — just a running log of potential ideas for the newsletter. Most of them are only a few words, just enough to remind me to poke around in the data when I get back to my computer. If I’m being honest, about 75% of those ideas go nowhere. Either the data doesn’t tell a compelling story, or that “great dataset” someone mentioned turns out to be nothing like they described.
But there’s been one idea sitting at the top of that list for a while — and I’ve been ignoring it. It’s about the American Catholic Church and immigration. What originally made me jot it down was a press release from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops with the headline, “USCCB Files Lawsuit on Unlawful Suspension of U.S. Refugee Admissions Program.”
The Catholic Church in the U.S. has long been more open to immigration than American evangelicals — or at least that’s what several Catholic friends have told me over the years.
Then Pope Leo waded into the debate. A Chicago cardinal planned to give Senator Dick Durbin a lifetime achievement award but faced pushback because Durbin has repeatedly voted to expand access to abortion services.
When asked about it, the Pope said, “Someone who says, ‘I’m against abortion but I’m in agreement with the inhuman treatment of immigrants in the United States,’ I don’t know if that’s pro-life.”
So, let’s explore that idea today — and I think we’ll end up with a much bigger conclusion than just how the average Catholic feels about green cards.
The 2024 Cooperative Election Study includes four specific questions about immigration policy:
Build a wall between the U.S. and Mexico
Provide permanent resident status to children of immigrants who were brought to the United States by their parents (Dreamers), and grant a pathway to citizenship if they meet the requirements and have committed no crimes
Increase the number of border patrol agents on the U.S.–Mexico border
Grant legal status to all undocumented immigrants who have held jobs and paid taxes for at least three years and have no felony convictions
Here’s the share of Protestants and Catholics who agreed with each of these statements.
When it comes to building the wall, white evangelicals are clear outliers, with 82% in favor. The next closest group is white Catholics, at 67%.
That same pattern shows up across most of these immigration questions: white evangelicals are the most conservative, and white Catholics tend to fall right behind them.
On the Dream Act, support drops for both groups. About 54% of white evangelicals back it, compared to 62% of white Catholics.
There are only two Christian groups where a clear majority don’t favor a pathway to citizenship: White evangelicals at 38% and white Catholics at 50%.
You can read the rest of this post on Substack.
Ryan Burge is an assistant professor of political science at Eastern Illinois University, a pastor in the American Baptist Church and the co-founder and frequent contributor to Religion in Public, a forum for scholars of religion and politics to make their work accessible to a more general audience. His research focuses on the intersection of religiosity and political behavior, especially in the U.S. Follow him on X at @ryanburge.