Salon is scratching its collective head about why Democrats are losing the Catholic vote.

Here is the article.

It’s one of the central contradictions of American politics: that there’s no such thing as the “Catholic vote,” yet the Catholics vote still matters.

There’s no “Catholic vote” in terms of Catholics representing an electoral bloc that votes according to what their bishops tell them, or in lockstep with the tenets of their religion. Yet winning Catholic voters has been essential to almost every presidential victory in modern times. And the defection of Catholics voters has played a role in some of the most consequential congressional turnovers in recent history — from 1994 to 2014 — making Catholics the ultimate swing voters. And for Democrats, that could be bad news.

While Catholics have been swing voters since Richard Nixon’s second term, white Catholics are now identifying as Republican by historic margins. According to the most recent polling from the Pew Research Center, 53 percent of white Catholics now favor the GOP, versus 39 percent who favor the Democrats—the largest point spread in the history of the Pew poll. And for the first time, white Catholics are more Republican than the voting group usually considered the ultimate Republicans: white Protestants (a designation that includes both mainline and evangelical Protestants).

These are ominous signs for the Democrats, evincing a new and growing allegiance with the Republican Party that has long-term implications.

It couldn't possibly have anything to do with the fact that Democrats support abortion, oppose religious exemptions on abortion or contraception, have called for crypto-religious tests to exclude faithful Catholics from the Supreme Court, held a convention where delegates booed a resolution in favor of a belief in God, pass resolutions describing Catholic doctrines as a threat to American values, requires that Catholics apostatize in order to become national figures, etc., etc.

Way down at the bottom of the story, there is this:

What does this Tea Party-ization of white Catholics mean for Democrats? On a national level, the Democrats’ weakness among white Catholics is for now largely being compensated for by its strength with Hispanic Catholics, who vote overwhelmingly and increasingly Democratic. While George W. Bush managed to get one-third of the Hispanic vote, McCain got only one-quarter and Romney just one-fifth. This meant that even with the massive defection of white Catholics in 2012, Obama still eked out an overall victory on the Catholic vote by 2 points. But that narrow margin means that Democrats can’t afford to lose any more ground with white Catholics.

Things get more dire at the state level and pose particular challenges to Democratic efforts to win back control of either chamber of Congress. In the 2006 off-year election, the white Catholic vote spilt just about evenly between Democratic and Republican congressional candidates. But by 2010, a yawning 20-point gap opened up that increased to 22 points in 2014.

“The shift in the Catholic vote should really be a wakeup call to the Democrats,” says Krueger. “White Catholics are 18 percent of the electorate and Catholics vote 1 to 2 percentage points above their representation in the overall population. This is a significant voting bloc that now perceives Republicans as being more welcoming to people of faith.”

I thought that the "white vote" didn't matter.

I guess it matters when it matters.

Probably best not to belong to a Party that despises you.

Catholics beginning to move away from Democrats.

In a shift that may have consequences for the 2014 elections—and beyond—the Pew Religion and Public Life Project reported late last month that Catholics are continuing to trend toward the Republican Party. Fifty-three percent of white Catholics now identify with or lean toward the Republican Party, while only 39 percent of them identify with or lean toward the Democratic Party. This is a significant shift from 2008, when Pew found that 41 percent of white, Catholic registered voters identified with or leaned toward the Republican Party, and in 2011, when 49 percent did.

Individual Catholics—including the clergy—are becoming more vocal in their concerns about the Democratic Party, which many perceive as being dismissive of Catholic concerns about life issues. Last year, Most Rev. Thomas Tobin, bishop of the Diocese of Providence, Rhode Island, revealed that although he had been a registered Democrat since 1969, he decided to switch his voting registration to the Republican Party: “I just said I can’t be associated structurally with that group, in terms of abortion and NARAL and Planned Parenthood, and the same-sex marriage agenda and the cultural destruction I saw going on. I just couldn’t do it anymore…. The a-ha moment for me was the 2012 Democratic National Convention…. It was just awful.”

It is likely that Catholics—especially those who attend weekly Mass—will play a more important role than ever in the upcoming elections. While Republicans lost among Catholics in 2008 by 13 points, the Democratic advantage became a seven-point Republican advantage by the end of 2011. Republicans now hold a significant lead among Catholics in general. And many of these Catholics are more motivated than ever to get out to the polls. According to the September 2014 Pew study, 79 percent of all Catholic respondents revealed that they will “definitely vote” in the upcoming elections. This is up 11 percentage points from September 2010. In fact, Catholics are more motivated to vote than any other religious group except white Evangelicals, who also indicate strong support for the Republican Party.