Are most Catholic priests Republican?

Are most Catholic priests Republican? June 3, 2015

That would seen to be the main conclusion of this intriguing chart, designed by Verdant Labs, to try and map out the political leanings of various professions, including the clergy.

The Acton Institute, however, isn’t so sure:

To determine the political leanings, Verdant used the data from the Federal Election Commission on contributions to political parties as a proxy for political views.

While I’m skeptical that the charts show a true representation of the political leanings of a particular field (though they are probably close), they do provide an interesting perspective on who gives money to politicians. Take, for example the chart on religion. The blue is the percentage that gives to Democrats and the red is for those who give to Republicans.

Are Catholic priests overwhelmingly Republican? Probably not. What is more likely is that the percentage of priests who donate to political candidates skews to the conservative side. That is also what I suspect is true about the presumably Protestants) pastors: those who give to candidates are those who are most likely to be Democrats.

Check it out and see what you think.


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