I found an interesting blog article from a Roman Catholic deacon in New York called "Obama wins with Catholic vote." http://www.patheos.com/...
The article quotes a November final Gallup poll estimating that the Catholic vote would go to President Obama by 52 to 45 percent. I haven't yet located the kind of magisterial cross-tabs that get published by the New York Times or Washington Post, but I suspect the actual number was more like 55 to 42. One of the main reasons for that is the overwhelming percentage of Latinos who voted for the Democrats.
Catholics make up about one-quarter of the American electorate, and they nearly always vote for the Democrats.
Catholics, of course, are far from a monolithic group. Older Catholics who regularly go to church, for example, are thought to be generally Republican, although there are many exceptions.
Please note that there is a wingnut site called catholicvote.org. They're not trustworthy.
I'm posting this because I'm glad to see that a significant majority of American Catholics, once again, were the foundation of a Democratic victory.
And this was true despite the electoral meddling of many of the Catholic bishops in the name of so-called "religious liberty." As usually happens, the majority of Catholics ignored the bishops and voted their conscience.
There is a lot of anti-Catholic [edit: hierarchy] sentiment among the left wing of the Democrats, but the Obama campaign itself was very careful to reach out to Catholics, who turned out in very high humbers.
I can't research this any more right now, but I'd be grateful if anybody had better data. I hate to rely on Gallup.
I can't find anything at the Public Policy Polling site on this. However, PPP did a poll in February 2012 regarding the birth control controversy: http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/.... It includes this finding:
There is a major disconnect between the leadership of the Catholic Church and rank and file Catholic voters on this issue. We did an over sample of almost 400 Catholics and found that they support the benefit overall, 53-44, and oppose an exception for Catholic hospitals and universities, 53-45. The Bishops really are not speaking for Catholics as a whole on this issue.
Their report goes on to predict:
Republican agitating on this issue could cause themselves trouble at the polls this year. 40% of voters say Mitt Romney's stance makes them less likely to vote for him, while only 23% consider it a positive. With the Catholic oversample it's 46% less likely and 28% more likely.
Final observation: this was the first time both VP candidates were Roman Catholics. One is a lunch-bucket, working-class, genuinely religious, social-justice Catholic. The other is a Randian, heretic vampire.
The good guys won.