Read two stories on Catholics and politics from the June 2006 edition of Sojourners magazine. One is “Who Owns The ‘Catholic Vote’?” by Maurice Timothy Reidy, an associate editor for the Catholic periodical Commonwealth. The other is “A Thorn in Both Their Sides” by Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne Jr.

Read a June 16, 2006, story from the National Catholic Reporter by Washington correspondent Joe Feuerherd.

Read a March 24, 2006, Commonweal article by John J. DiIulio who is a former director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives and now teaches in the political science department at the University of Pennsylvania. He has also served on the domestic policy steering committee of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Read “States probe limits of abortion policy,” a June 22, 2006, analysis of the South Dakota law and other developments from Stateline.org.

See a chart of 2004 exit polls at the CNN web site that shows the Catholic vote results for each candidate and can be broken down by state.

The Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University in Washington conducts an annual poll of U.S. Catholics that includes questions on politics. CARA analysts examined the 2004 Catholic vote in this PDF file. An April 2004 analysis showed that 30.5 percent of Catholics said they usually think of themselves as Republicans, 38.5 percent as Democrats and 21.8 percent […]

An August 2005 Pew Forum poll examines the attitudes of various religious groups, including Catholics, toward politics and salient issues.

A Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll conducted in late June 2006 about voter views on the religious affiliations of possible presidential candidates showed that 10 percent of respondents would not vote for a candidate who was Roman Catholic. Yet that figure is much lower than the 21 percent who said they would not vote for an evangelical Protestant, […]

Read a July 6, 2006, backgrounder from the Pew Research Center titled “Do the Democrats Have a ‘God Problem’? How Public Perceptions May Spell Trouble for the Party.” The backgrounder makes use of material from a number of Pew surveys. Contact one of the report’s authors, Gregory A. Smith of the Pew Forum on Religion […]