Since President Harry Truman’s upset win in 1948, Ohio’s popular vote has predicted the presidential outcome in every case but two: 1960 and 2020. In both cases, the Democrats ran a Roman Catholic candidate.

Roman Catholicism is the Buckeye State’s largest Christian denomination. So what do the just under two million Roman Catholics have to do with the changing the buckeye state’s bellwether status?

The answer may surprise you.

If Americans vote their religious identity, and Ohio represents the nation’s political pulse, the state’s Catholics should have made it a closer race for Ohio’s 18 electoral votes. Instead, and according to the AP’s Vote Cast survey, President Trump beat Catholic Joe Biden 57 to 42 percent among Ohio Catholics.

• Ohio Catholics gave a President Trump a 15-point margin in 2020.
• Historically Catholics voted for Catholic political candidates.
• Now, Catholic vote choice generally divides by how often one attends Mass.

Given this spread, where did the idea that Catholics vote for catholic candidates come from? In a word: history.

Catholics voted overwhelming for Democratic New York Governor Al Smith against Republican Herbert Hoover in 1928. That year, Ohio went with Hoover, the winner.

In 1960, Catholic John F. Kennedy won a close race, and 80 percent of the Catholic vote.

According to Dr. Mark Rozell, and state politics and religion scholar at George Mason University in Virginia, Kennedy’s win came with “a great deal of pride among American Catholics that one of their own could reach the highest office in the land.”

Yet JFK didn’t win Ohio because, according to analysis of post-election surveys, “Mr. Kennedy made little headway among non-Catholics.” But, different from 1960, today’s Catholic Democrats can’t even count on their fellow parishioners in the polling booth.

And it’s not just 2020. Remember 2004?

Rozell reminds us that in that race “Catholic John Kerry, a former seminary student, lost the Catholic vote to Methodist George W. Bush. And he lost the Catholic vote primarily because of white conservative Catholics.”

Rozell explains that the religious label has lost its ability to pair Catholic candidates with their coreligionists, at least in Ohio.

 “Those who are deeply religious, who attend regular services, perhaps daily Mass or at least weekly Mass, they tend to be heavily Republicans, and they preference the so-called social/moral issues in voting such as abortion. Whereas the occasional church goers or the so-called nominal Catholics or cultural Catholics tend to be very heavily Democratic Party voters.”   

Steven Krueger, President of Catholic Democrats told me, outside Ohio, Biden performed much better than he did in the Buckeye State.

 “In that same AP poll that you talked about, when you break it out according to the Midwest, he won Catholics by 3.5 points.”

We’re a long way from 1960 in terms of Catholic support for a Democrat, and, in places like Ohio, Krueger suggests much has to do with what Catholics hear in their parishes, especially on issues like abortion.

 “We have Catholic clergy homolyzing on that, we have Catholic clergy including voter recommendations in the parish bulletin against church teaching, I might add, and against canon law, and against papal directives.”

I reached out to pro-Trump Catholic organizations for their perspective, including Catholics for Trump, which declined my interview requests. But a statement posted to the website for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops says, in part:

“The American people have spoken in this election. We recognize that Joseph R. Biden, Jr. has received enough votes to be elected the 46^th President of the United States. We ask the Blessed Virgin Mary to intercede for us. May she help us work together to fulfill one nation under God where the sanctity of every human life is defended . . .”

In 1960, Ohio went republican because JFK couldn’t get Protestants to join Catholics. In 2020, Ohio went Republican because the majority of Catholics joined Protestants in supporting President Trump. And if this Catholic Republican trend continues, it may mean Ohio becomes reliably red.