Tracking the Catholic Vote: Too Close to Call?

With the conventions over and the debates approaching it is time to start tracking the vote of U.S. Catholics a bit more closely on the blog. The figure below aggregates the preferences of registered voters who self-identify as Catholic in national polls through last week (we'll comment on battleground state polls when preferences of Catholics are available and if you're looking for national data from previous elections you'll find it here). 

The vote of Catholics remains quite evenly split 47% for President Obama and 45% for Gov. Romney (most of the differences between the candidates have been within margins of sampling error for the sub-group). Once in March and again in July, President Obama had a lead of 9 percentage points. Gov. Romney's biggest lead was 5 percentage points in April. He also opened a 4 percentage point lead during and after the Republican Party Convention that has now disappeared. Gov. Romney has never polled lower than 42% among Catholics and President Obama's support has never measured lower than 44% among this group.

Since January, President Obama has averaged 47% support among registered Catholics and Gov. Romney has averaged 46%. Rarely has either candidate measured at or above 50%. A small percentage of registered Catholics remain undecided. These are the potential voters who will likely sway the "Catholic vote" one way or the other. As it is often noted, the preferences of Catholics are often correlated with the overall popular vote (not too much of a surprise as one in four voters are Catholic).

Among other religious groups, Gov. Romney holds a lead of 51% to 40% over President Obama among Protestants (on average, 52% to 40% since January). Nones (i.e., those without a religious affiliation) prefer President Obama 63% to 27% for Gov. Romney (on average, 67% to 24% since January). 

New Data Update 9/19: Since originally posting this the Democratic Party Convention bounce has entered Gallup's data aggregations (...the trend also includes additional polls conducted by Pew that are now reported). As of the most recent update, the President has pushed a 2 percentage point lead among Catholic registered voters noted above to 10 percentage points (i.e., the average of Gallup and Pew's most recent survey estimates). If the election were today, it would no longer be "too close to call" as that kind of a margin is beyond sampling error. But I don't expect President Obama to maintain this wide of a margin in the next weekly updates. This is more likely due to the appearance of the bounce in Gallup's lagged data trend than the effect of recent events overseas or from Gov. Romney's remarks about the "47 percent." If the Catholic electorate mirrors the national electorate the race for the Catholic vote will tighten again. Polling was just not made for the 24-hour cable news cycle. It is always a bit behind events. The updated figure is below:

The next, more current, update (through Sept. 23) for the Catholic vote has been posted here.

Are the Parties Over? Observations from an Apolitical Political Scientist

Time for One Last Game: “A three letter word for Divine Creator”
With the nominating conventions over there is new data to analyze. The Clint Eastwood speech at the Republican Convention was probably one of the oddest things I’ve seen. Yet, I am equally struck by the awkward floor vote at the Democratic Convention to reinsert the word “God” into the platform after what appeared to be sufficient delegate opposition to block this change. In recent elections the Democratic Party has become increasingly dependent on the votes of the religiously unaffiliated. It appears that some in that party may be making the same mistake reporters often fall into by assuming that the religiously unaffiliated (i.e. “Nones”) are mostly people who do not believe in God or who are not religious in any way. This is not the case and the religiously unaffiliated are sub-group with diverse religious beliefs and practices. Those who don’t believe in God make up a small percentage of the U.S. adult population. As shown below, in 59 national polls since 1944, the percentage of Americans who said they believed in God in 2011 was only 5 percentage points different from what it was in 1944.

If current trends continue, we might expect to see a majority of Americans not believing in God around the year 2560 (…and I still wouldn’t bet on that as American religiosity historically has ebbed and flowed with religious revivals and declines). At best one could say the Democratic Party delegates were perhaps more than 500 years out in front of the prevailing trend?

Analyzing the nomination acceptance speeches of both candidates and the party platforms reveals some interesting similarities and differences. For example, both platforms were written at the level of a college sophomore’s reading comprehension. Both candidates’ speeches were written at the 7th grade level. This is typical as spoken word text always grades out lower than text meant to be read. The media has given a lot of attention to the use of the word “God” in the platforms. I thought it might be interesting to add a few more words into the discussion and also include the Catholic Church’s “platform” document, Faithful Citizenship. The figure below provides the total mentions of each word or phrase shown as a percentage of all words in each document or speech.

As one might expect Faithful Citizenship has the strongest focus on God, a creator, or religion followed by Gov. Romney’s acceptance speech (…God has been disappearing from American print in general for many years now). The Church also places a greater emphasis than the parties or candidates on abortion, the poor, the death penalty or capital punishment, and contraceptives. President Obama’s speech referenced education, college, and schooling more than other sources. He also noted debt and the deficit more. The Democratic Party platform leads in references to taxes or taxation (by a thin margin), the middle class, and the environment or climate. Gov. Romney’s acceptance speech focused strongly on unemployment and jobs.

Last week I posted Wordle cloud diagrams for each of the party platforms. They do not reveal much other than the fact that the Democrats repeatedly use the president's name, whereas Republicans mention Romney only once by name. Below you can see how Faithful Citizenship is summarized (...words appearing more often appear larger in the cloud):

The Emerging Overtly Partisan Press
Cardinal Dolan gave a benediction at both conventions. Quite an interesting pattern emerged in the media’s response to this. Fox News carried the prayers live. CNN let the audio of the prayers run in the background audio while its commentators discussed the nominee’s speeches. MSNBC did not use any audio or video of Cardinal Dolan. I think the fact that Cardinal Dolan spoke at both conventions reflects the non-partisan tone of Faithful Citizenship. 

At the same time some in the media appear to be adopting more partisan voices. In the past decade, these cable news channels have drifted away from even the appearance of objectivity (...not too long ago this was a prized value of good journalism) and now seem to gravitate overtly to party-based ideological positions. Fox News is clearly supportive of the Republican Party and MSNBC is clearly supportive of the Democratic Party. CNN which has historically tilted left, while still trying to maintain an outward appearance of objectivity, may be attempting to move to a center position (e.g., a CNN commentator responded to the delegates’ response to the vote for putting “God” back in the platform as “beyond awkward, embarrassing, it’s stupid”).  

What effect has this evolving media environment had? Fox News had great ratings during the Republican Convention and MSNBC led in the ratings during the Democratic Convention. At the same time, many members of both parties no longer find the “opposing” news media channel believable! Successful cable news has essentially sold out objectivity for ratings. 

I think Gov. Romney could have read the phone book and Fox News commentators would have found his speech appealing. President Obama could have done the same and Chris Matthews would likely have called it a home run and felt a new thrill in his leg. I am troubled by a media landscape with two large groups of Americans (i.e., those paying attention), each tuning into news channels to hear what they want to hear—a story crafted just for them—rather than the news. This only reinforces popular pressures that have been preventing Democrats and Republicans from working together in government. Studies have also shown that Fox News and MSNBC viewers are among the least informed (...should anyone be surprised given that they are only hearing half the news?).

Arguably the only positive effect of this new partisan media may be in its capacity to keep the stove hot for the “opposition” party. Thus, when President George W. Bush was in office, MSNBC was leading the way in criticizing and noting the president’s shortcomings—sometimes fairly and sometimes not. But they kept the cynicism and the pressure on. Now I see Fox News doing the same—sometimes fairly and sometimes not. An unfortunate side effect of this new type of news channel is that the network closer to the party in power (currently MSNBC) often looks a bit foolish playing the role of cheerleader for the incumbent and ignoring their faults when these are in plain view of the public.

Behind the Curtain
President Obama’s campaigns have spent an exceptional amount of money on polling, focus groups, and voter research (…and I’m not alone in noting this). In the modern campaign these are used to test messages and language which gets refashioned into talking points. Polling is important to the 21st century Democratic Party as its support is based primarily on identity politics. It generally attempts to build a coalition of sub-groups in the electorate and needs polling to do this well. The party tends to craft its messages and policies to meet the collective preferences of this coalition. A big part of the party’s policies are reflective of patronage to these groups. Regardless of his personal preferences, when President Obama shifts on an issue it is likely more often than not in response to or supported by polling data. I've noted that I think if the president’s decision on the contraceptive mandate was likely based on survey data. If it were more about health policy than identity politics, the first class of drugs to be subsidized without need for a co-pay would likely have been blood pressure and cholesterol drugs to combat heart disease, the number one killer of Americans and of American women (e.g., drug subsidies in Australia). 

Another example of the Democratic Party’s use of identity politics and polling is its growing focus on environmental issues in the last dozen years. Policies like cap-and-trade test well among college educated voters. This segment’s enthusiasm for social justice began to wane in the late 1990s and the Democratic Party steered toward environmental justice appeals that fared better with this important voter sub-group. Yet, these environmental initiatives would likely have a negative impact on the poor. Collectively they would amount to an indirect regressive tax (the wealthy can afford bigger energy bills without going broke, many in the working class cannot). These policies would also create an inflationary ripple effect throughout the economy and slow economic growth. Will they help the environment? It’s questionable. Climate change is a classic collective action problem and if China, India, and other developing countries decide not to go along with the advanced industrial and post-industrial countries in curbing carbon emissions the impact would be modest at best (...and climate knows no borders). In essence it would be weak medicine with strongly negative side effects borne disproportionately by the poor and working class.
 
Republicans structure their politics in a different fashion. Since the days of Milton Friedman and Ronald Reagan, appeals of the Party have been rigidly based in ideology (e.g., market forces, deregulation, tax cuts, reducing government spending, supporting a basket of socially conservative issues). Thus, generally you see Republican campaigns using significantly less polling than Democrats in campaign finance reports over the years and in return often get criticized for “not having new ideas” or being “out of touch.” They don’t often test their messages—they try to sell their ideology as best they can to the widest audience possible. This creates a dynamic where changing policies is treated as heresy and can result in a member being marginalized or expelled (e.g. the effects of Grover Norquist’s the tax pledge). When it comes to taxes this has created a dysfunctional one-way ratchet where even a temporary tax cut to create economic growth cannot be left to expire without being considered a violation of the Party’s ideology. At the same time, Republicans will quickly jettison aspects of its ideology when these are co-opted by the Democrats. For example, the Affordable Care Act is partially based on a Heritage Foundation health care model (i.e., “Assuring Affordable Health Care for All Americans” by Stuart M. Butler, 1989. The author of this paper now notes “I've altered my views”) that is similar to the system eventually created by Gov. Romney in Massachusetts. Even cap-and-trade has some conservative roots.

These two very different party structures and approaches are evident in the parties’ platforms, speeches, and eventually their policies. I think it has led the Republicans to present a rather confusing agenda of creating jobs and reigning in debt and the deficit while not recognizing that the debt cannot be tackled without increasing revenue and that cutting spending will lead to a loss of jobs and higher unemployment in the short-term. It also leads them to propose rigid balanced budget requirements that would essentially cripple the country in a time of economic crisis, disaster, or war (...often this is sold in reference to the average American family balancing their budgets at the kitchen table. That is a powerful image but incorrect. Most Americans don’t have to balance their budget and take on debt for most of their life to finance the costs of owning a home, automobiles, educational loans and in the short term many use credit cards, equity loans, or title loans that allow them to “live beyond their means”).

In my opinion, both of these strategies in competition with each other do not work well in terms of policy making for the country (disclaimer: I have no party affiliation). Republicans will not raise taxes because of their strict reliance on ideology and Democrats resist spending cuts because of their need to support programs important to their coalition. The two major parties in America are playing a game of chicken and this election will unlikely end it. I don’t know of any political scientist who is predicting one of these two parties will be able to control the executive and legislative branches in January 2013. They will have to work together to get anything done and I don’t know how this will be possible (…and eventually the credit rating agencies will act again). I think this is why whoever wins the presidency will be headed for disappointment. As shown below, only one president since the end of World War II has left office being more popular than when he entered (the graph shows percentage approval). President Clinton did so, in-part by initially winning a 3-candidate race with a plurality of support in 1992.

Americans expect their presidents to keep promises and solve problems. You might even say they expect them to be “wizards.” As President George W. Bush once said, “if I had a magic wand, I would wave it.” This is often cited as an amusing “Bushism” but among political scientists and economists who read an allegory into The Wizard of Oz it can also have a deeper meaning. In that children’s story some see metaphors about the U.S. presidency and monetary policy: yellow bricks and OZ (the gold standard), magical ruby slippers (silver in the book), and a wizard who seems all powerful but in the end is just a man behind a curtain who can only offer symbolic gifts for the things that people really desire. You can see a picture of President McKinley—a possible inspiration for the Wizard—from Judge, a weekly magazine of the time.

I couldn’t help but think about this allegorical reading again when I saw this recent Associated Press picture of the president:

Does he need magic to get re-elected? No president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt has won as an incumbent with the economic results of the Obama administration (i.e., an unemployment rate above 8 percent). I think this is why we heard about FDR and Lincoln in his acceptance speech as both similarly served during a period of a great crisis that was not of their own making. Despite election forecasting models of the past predicting a poor outlook for the incumbent, the president leads in many aggregate polling averages, Electoral College scenarios, and election market predictions. In my opinion, especially after the modest goals outlined in his acceptance speech, President Obama has acknowledged that most Americans know he’s no wizard. He hangs on to a lead because Gov. Romney has so far failed to convince  enough of the electorate that he has the magic set of policies that can bring the country out of its anemic recovery. America may not be losing much of its belief in God but many may now realize no one they elect is a problem solving wizard. President Obama’s greatest asset is that he is well liked personally by many Americans. If re-elected, and history repeats itself again, odds are he will be less well liked in 2016.

The Bumps Are Gone?
Both campaigns appear to have received the expected post-convention boost in the polls. The president’s convention bump appears to have scaled more percentage points and may hang around for longer than Gov. Romney’s (one of the advantages of going second). Some of the most recent polls show the race may be tightening again and some leads are disappearing again into the margin of sampling error. The Investor's Business Daily/Christian Science Monitor/TIPP Poll provides some great topline data. This survey has President Obama at 46% and Gov. Romney at 44% among registered voters (the margin of error is +/-3.5 percentage points). A few interesting points:

• The president’s strong support among those without a religious affiliation (i.e., Nones) is at the level he would need for re-election (73% to 17%) given his lack of support among Protestants (36% to 55%). As is often the case, the Catholic numbers mirror the population overall with a 46% to 44% edge for President Obama.
• Although the president leads among female registered voters overall (51% to 40%), he is trailing a bit among married women (45% to 50%). The president’s lead in this sub-group overall is rooted in support from unmarried females (57% to 30%).
• The president is having less success holding on to his voters from 2008 with 82% of these individuals expressing support for him in 2012. Gov. Romney is holding on to 90% of Sen. McCain voters.
• The president maintains strong leads among young adults ages 18 to 44 (49% to 39%), minorities (80% to 12%), urban residents (61% compared to 29%), and those living in the Northeast (53% to 35%).

It is still too early to put too much weight into polls as a predictor of eventual outcomes. The debates, upcoming economic reports, a continued onslaught of media ads and get out the vote efforts remain ahead. If past campaigns are any indicator there will also be talk of possible October surprises coming soon. With the party conventions over it still looks too close to call. The vote of American Catholics remains split.

Spot the difference...

Recently I was contacted several times by a reporter at The Economist for some data. I’ve always felt that this is one of the last few intelligent magazines on the racks. But I also recall being concerned after speaking to this reporter and thinking, “he doesn’t quite get the Church.” He seemed stunned to find out that the Catholic Church in the United States doesn’t have a neat and tidy set of financials done annually. He felt the Church should be doing what any multinational corporation would do. I kept telling him the Church is not Walmart.

I just read the story in this week’s Economist and it has shaken my opinion of the publication a bit. I’m not concerned about any anti-Catholic “bias” or the rehashing of the financial fallout of the sex abuse crisis or diocesan bankruptcies. Instead I am concerned about the lack of understanding of what the Church is as an institution in the piece. Here’s a taste:

“[T]he finances of the Catholic church in America are an unholy mess. … The church’s finances look poorly co-ordinated.”

“[T]here are now over 6,800 Catholic schools (5% of the national total); 630 hospitals (11%) plus a similar number of smaller health facilities; and 244 colleges and universities. … All these institutions are subject to the oversight of a bishop or a religious order. The Economist estimates that annual spending by the church and entities owned by the church was around $170 billion in 2010 (the church does not release such figures). … For purposes of secular comparison, in 2010 General Electric’s revenue was $150 billion and Walmart employed roughly 2m people.”

“Where that money comes from is hard to say (the church does not release numbers on this either). Some of it is from the offerings of the faithful. Anecdotal evidence suggests that America’s Catholics give about $10 per week on average. Assuming that one-third attend church regularly, that would put the annual offertory income at around $13 billion.”

I am guessing The Economist does not have a copy of the Code of Canon Law. Even a glancing read of the Code would have revealed that the Church is quite clearly not run like a multinational corporation such as Walmart or General Electric and I for one am glad it’s not. The sole objective of the modern corporation is to extract and grow profits and in doing so it creates economic growth, wealth, and products and services we desire. But it sadly has no capacity for social justice. Even if a corporate CEO did devote corporate resources for a “good cause” shareholders could sue for neglect of fiduciary responsibility. As many Americans have learned in the last four years of recession and recovery, the modern corporation is no paragon of transparency and ethics (…as a great documentary, The Corporation, demonstrates these institutions really are “people” under the law. The kind of people that would likely be diagnosed as psychopaths using The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders).

Why don’t the people and institutions that make up the Church in the United States take the time to communicate their budgets and revenue together in an annual hierarchical manner so the Church can produce a financial report that The Economist needs for its story? Because it would be an extraordinary waste of the Church’s resources and time. The Church is not in the business of generating profits like a corporation. It provides ministry, charity, and service to the communities it exists in. It also has no legal obligation to provide what The Economist desires.

As an institution, the Church is nearly 2,000 years old and its structure was fashioned well before modern communication. This reality required significant local autonomy. Priests were responsible for parishes, bishops for dioceses. This same feudal-like structure persists. Add on to this the development of colleges, schools, hospitals, and charities that were often associated with religious orders. Separate aspects of the Church operate for the most part independently—with their own leadership, budgets, revenues, and obligations (perhaps some of the frustration from The Economist comes from the realization that financials do exist for each of these institutions and organizations but it would take forever to collect and tally them all).

I hate to break this to The Economist but there is no “U.S. Catholic Church.” However, one of the best descriptions of all that is the Church in the United States can be found in The Official Catholic Directory. If you are listed in it you are an official part of the Church and you are tax exempt. CARA and Georgetown University are in the OCD under the Archdiocese of Washington. However, we don’t share our financials with Cardinal Wuerl (...we have annual audits and answer to a Board of Directors). He in no way dictates day to day operations nor does he have any direct administrative role. Yet he is, importantly, the pastoral leader of all Catholic entities in the Archdiocese.

What The Economist doesn’t appear to get is that the institutions of the Church are incredibly decentralized—operating as individual entities under the pastoral umbrella of the Church. The pope is not a CEO sitting in the Vatican with a big map saying “build a parish here, a hospital here, and close that school over there.” Yet this is what The Economist wants the Church to be (maybe they’ve watched The Da Vinci Code a few too many times?). Throughout The Economist’s story there is an underlying tone or belief by the reporter that the Church has this information but is withholding it—“the Church does not release such figures.”  The reporter fails to understand that the Church does not have these figures (e.g., aggregated annual spending by all entities of the Church, all donations to Church entities) because it has no apparatus to collect them.

The little data collection that does go on in the Church broadly (e.g., the Vatican's Annuarium Statisticum Ecclesiae or Annuario Pontificio) is related to what the Church does—it’s about ministry (i.e., numbers of baptisms, marriages, ordinations). I understand the natural skepticism and cynicism of The Economist but I can also attest that if you want to get rich, working for the Church would be a lousy idea. The $10 per week, on average, given by parishioner families is just enough to keep the lights on in most U.S. parishes. The most common reason for a Catholic school to close is their inability to generate enough revenue to keep the school operating. Nearly half of all individuals providing ministry or service in a U.S. parish are volunteers. Among those who are paid, the median annual wages or salaries amount to $31,000. The pastor is typically among the lowest paid members of the staff (…although he does receive free housing). By canon law, each parish (and diocese) is required to have a finance council that oversees the dollars and cents of its operations—most often composed of parishioners with financial experience. How many Walmarts have a community council including customers helping to make decisions for the local store? 

I was sure The Economist doesn’t have a copy of the Code of Canon Law when I read the that the Church has “17,958 parishes run by 39,466 priests and 16,921 married deacons.” Not all priests and deacons are in parish ministry. Not all deacons are married. No deacons technically “run” a Catholic parish. Ultimately, all parishes are administered or supervised by priests. Most people helping a parish operate are neither priests nor deacons. In a small number of parishes, under Canon 517.2, the pastoral care of the parish may be entrusted to a deacon—more often to a lay person—but these parishes remain under the supervision of a non-resident priest. The vast majority of deacons (married or not) are not serving in this capacity. In fact, the ministry of deacons, who are not paid, is oriented toward service, not administration.

Parishes may be the heart of the Church, but as The Economist also found, much of the economic activity of the Church occurs in hospitals (they estimate 57% of all spending is health related. The other largest component of spending is said to be within colleges and universities at 28%). Here again, as with universities, these are institutions that are for the most part operating independently under the pastoral umbrella of the Church. There is no bishop sitting in these hospitals going over patient bills or setting the costs for procedures. This is not what bishops do. 

If the aim of this article was to encourage the Church to be more like Walmart I personally remain unconvinced. I don’t know any person or institution that is not without its sins and The Economist’s story correctly notes many of the Church’s recent failings. But I would also counter that there are many corporations who really, really need to find a way to adopt some of the charitable focus of most non-profits (religious or secular) more than the Church needs to adopt corporate accounting practices on a unified global scale. I know the Church does a lot more good in the world than Walmart or General Electric (the latter being a for-profit that is magically “tax exempt”). Would it be able to do this better with more financial oversight? I agree it would. But I’m not sure the effort that it would take to create an annual summary of the Church’s finances for every parish, school, hospital, and charity around the world would be the best use of its time (...costs would exceed benefits). I also think that such a device would not prevent, reduce, or deter any illegal or abusive activity, just as it fails to do so in the corporate world.

Update (8/19): I’ve examined the math a bit more in The Economist piece and discovered a significant problem. The story overestimates annual Catholic Church offertory by $4.6 billion or 50% because they assume Mass-attending individuals give an average of $10 per week (for data see pg. 43) rather than households. Also, The Economist’s claim that Catholic parish giving has declined in the last decade is incorrect. As shown in the figure below, the average amount given per week, per parish household increased from 2000 to 2010 (peaking in 2005; declines are likely more related to the effects of the recession than anything else). Because the Catholic population has grown and the average amount given per household has increased the total offertory in 2010 is actually 23% larger than it was in 2000 (even after adjusting for inflation).

I've also had some emails from people responding to this blog. One individual who works in the Church said, “Trust me the church is run by lay incompetents and they desperately need to adopt modern management practices.” As I note in the post, I believe some changes would be good. I’m just not sure the Church needs to refashion itself into a multinational corporation. Another individual who expressed a lot of anger with the Church regarding the sexual abuse of minors by clergy said, “You fail to make any connection between the Church’s lack of transparency and cover-ups and failings, and its multifaceted structure and operation that you emphasize so much.” I would agree with the John Jay criminal justice researchers who cited organizational factors (see pg. 4) as causes of the abuse crisis. The Church has taken some steps to alter its structure in the last decade and these reforms are evaluated annually on a national level and these data are released to the public for review. Still much remains to be done to heal the wounds caused by abuse, if this is even possible. The post does not focus on the issue of abuse because the errors of the The Economist story are in failing to report accurately on how the Church operates financially.

Update (8/27): I had posted material on the blog that goes into the background of the reporter I spoke with (The Economist does not give bylines) and highlighted some of the content in the article that I believe is strongly related to the point of view of the corporate consulting world that the author comes from. There is a trail of this editorial material—often in the form of bizarre “advice”—in his articles about the Church that one does not often see in news or investigative journalism. I removed this from the blog because I think the post above makes the more important points about his errors and I don’t think the author or his work is in need of more attention (...even if it is negative).  

Above photos courtesy of rosebennet and seanbirm at Flickr Creative Commons.