Why do Catholics vote to the left of Protestants in modern Electoral Politics?

[America Needs a 13-6 Progressive SCOTUS]

Honestly, this is the sort of thing that simply shows how History can sometimes turn itself completely backwards. Historically, when Protestants split from Catholics several centuries ago, the Protestants were splitting to make a religion that was slightly to the left of Catholics at the ideological level. Yet in modern Electoral Politics, this dynamic appears to have been completely inverted. Why did things happen like this?

[DavidB.]

Protestants are more fiscally conservative but socially liberal, whereas Catholics are fiscally liberal and socially conservative

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

Seems like an unnecessary question, but hey, everyone's new to a topic at some point!

Historically, Catholics tended to favor the Democrats. This is because most of America's Catholics came from immigrant communities (initially the Irish and the Germans, and later on the Italians and the Poles), many immigrants tended to be poor, and, in turn, American conservatism was shaped around a sort of bourgeois or ruling class Protestant nationalism. Immigrants in general were seen as foreign, destitute, corrupt, and potentially revolutionary; the danger was exacerbated with Catholics, who were seen as dividing their loyalties between nation and Pope, and had a reputation for loving alcohol. Abraham Lincoln's comments on immigrants aside, the Republican Party is very much descended from this tradition.

So what does this have to do with today? Well, in America, Protestants--in this case, particularly evangelical Protestants in the South and West--are an important part of the Republican coalition. Meanwhile, liberal Protestant churches are shedding their numbers (we are told). So this gives a natural right-leaning weight to the Protestant vote tally. And as for Catholics? They are mostly integrated into American society such that one's Catholicism is in itself not a good predictor of how one will vote. It's important to note, however, that religiosity among Catholics (or, at least non-Hispanic white Catholics) is tied to conservative politics.

[Wazza [INACTIVE]]

The dominance of evangelical churches in US protestantism along with a large chunk of the US catholic population being Hispanic is probably the main factor of this statistical phenomena.

[Senator Incitatus]

We could get well into the theology behind this question — I've actually sat in on some fascinating lectures about Protestant and Catholic visions of American history — but the simplest answer is the belief in good works.

Catholics, like Muslims, believe in an absolute obligation to charity, which makes them more economically illiberal than Protestants on balance. (Note that this is not the same as being leftist, since Catholics obviously have a strong basic sense of hierarchy.) This manifests in modern politics in a belief in and support for the welfare state.

While Protestants are basically liberal egalitarians, Catholics are hierarchical believers in redistribution. Since the American Republican Party is a liberal conservative party, its interests are better aligned with the teachings of Protestantism.

We can also talk about historical and demographic reasons for Catholic support for Democrats, but I think Cath covered those pretty well.

[buritobr]

In Germany, the catholics are more CDU/CSU, and the protestants are more SPD

[Skill and Chance]

Mostly because of how many left-leaning Protestants left the church since 1960.  There was also a strong socially conservative/fiscally liberal wing of the Democrats 50-100 years ago that was strongly linked with Catholicism but has basically faded away now everywhere except Louisiana.

[Joe Haydn]

For most of European History, Protestantism was more "liberal" and Catholicism more "conservative." Part of it had to do with which theology favored which form of government. Throughout much of Early Modern Europe, the hierarchical nature of Catholicism and High Church Protestantism was used to back up the belief in a divine right of kings. This was rejected by Low Churchers, whose belief in the connection between God and the individual more often favored parliamentarism instead.

It was also largely due to which religious group made up the ruling class. In many Protestant countries, those few Catholics left were mainly members of the old nobility that had inherited their wealth. By contrast, Protestantism and the "Protestant work ethic" was embraced by the urban middle class who would later make up the liberal bourgeoisie. As mentioned by buritobr, this can still be seen today in the religious makeup of the main German political parties.

In a minority of countries, however, Protestants made up the ruling class, like in Northern Ireland. There, the well-off were mostly English colonists, and the poor and downtrodden were mostly Catholics. That's why today, Catholic parties there are generally more leftist and Protestant ones more right-wing.

The same is true for the United States. For a very long time, the American ruling class was made up of WASPs who were perfectly happy with the status quo. Catholics were mostly poor immigrants centered in urban communities, and as a result they came to back leftist economics more frequently than others.

[Orser67]

The diversity of answers in this thread, all of which are correct or at least plausible, is a good indication that this isn't a simple question. But I would emphasize:

1)Catholics are less likely to be white, and perhaps less likely to live in rural areas (someone fact check me on that second part)
2)Mainline Protestantism, which is generally fairly moderate, has declined in recent decades, meaning that a larger share of Protestants are Evangelicals, who are generally fairly conservative.
3)Catholics have been associated with the Democratic Party almost since the formation of that party, while Protestants have been associated with the Republican Party since the formation of that party.