By Currents News
According to political analyst Ryan Burge of Eastern Illinois University, the fact that the 2024 U.S. presidential election was largely over by midnight on November 6 night is indicative that the race for the White House between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris wasn’t even close.
The associate professor of political science tells Currents News that this election season President-Elect Donald Trump seems to have made inroads with basically every single group of voters.
Burge, who also conducts polls on the interaction between religion and politics, says Catholics had a big say in the election outcome: “White Catholics are becoming, every election cycle, an increasingly stronger GOP voting block.” Not only this, he explains, “but one thing we’re seeing is the Hispanic vote mattered a whole lot and I think Hispanic Catholics were a huge part of that.”
Despite Puerto Rico being disparaged at a Madison Square Garden Trump rally, Hispanics helped carry the former president to victory once again.
According to CNN exit poll results, 56%t of catholic voters supported Trump, while 41% backed Vice President Kamala Harris. While issues important to Catholics – like abortion and immigration – were factors when they cast their ballots, there’s one issue that Burge says trumped the rest.
“It’s not even being a Catholic, it’s being an American,” he explains. “Having to pay for gas and groceries – I think if you look at the data it’s about the economy, economy, economy. I think clearly what we see is this was a referendum on that one topic of, ‘Are you financially doing better today than you were doing four years ago?’ and it looks clearly like a lot of Americans said, ‘No, I’m not’”
With the results settled, among those congratulating President Trump on his win was the president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Archbishop Timothy Broglio. He asked Catholics to pray for the President-Elect as well as all leaders in public life, that they may rise to meet the responsibilities entrusted to them.