A new data analysis by statistician Ryan Burge shows in detail how Catholic voters moved decisively toward the Republican Party in the 2024 presidential election, breaking from nearly two decades of closely divided results.
The analysis drew on data from the Cooperative Election Study and was shared by Burge in a Jan. 31 post on X.
For a long time, the Catholic vote has been almost perfectly evenly divided.
— Ryan Burge 📊 (@ryanburge) February 1, 2026
That shifted in 2024 when 56% of Catholics cast a ballot for Trump.
Among white Catholics 65% favored the GOP.
Among non-white Catholics, Trump did 16 pct points better in 2024 compared to 2016. pic.twitter.com/R4l8eaoLVa
Burge showed that 56% of Catholic voters backed President Donald Trump in 2024, compared with 42% who supported his Democratic opponent, former Vice President Kamala Harris. The margin marks a clear widening from 2016, when Catholics favored Republicans by a narrower 50%-to-46% margin.
The shift was driven in part by significant gains among non-white Catholic voters, a demographic that has historically leaned Democratic. Trump improved his performance among non-white Catholics by 16 points compared with 2016, with support rising from 24% to 40%. Democratic support fell from 71% to 59%.
White Catholics also continued trending rightward, giving Republicans 64% of their votes in 2024, up from 57% in 2016. In contrast, Democratic backing fell from 46% to 42%.
For much of the past two decades, Catholic voters closely tracked the national electorate. In 2008, Catholics split evenly between the two parties. Republicans held modest advantages over Democrats in 2012 (51% to 48%), 2016 (50% to 46%), and 2020 (52% to 47%), before the gap widened significantly to 14 points in 2024.