Seasons of Grace
Joe Carter, writing over at the Acton Institute Power Blog, has just pointed out a quirky little fact: Catholic priests vote Republican, while Protestants vote Democratic.
In a way, I’m surprised: That statistic seems to stand against the common perception of Catholics as defenders of social justice (hence liberal) and Protestants as Bible Belt conservatives.
But on the other hand, most Catholics are vehemently opposed to the Democrats’ golden calf of abortion-on-demand.
The Acton Institute gleans the information about Catholic clerics’ alignment with the Republicans from a series of interactive charts by Verdant Labs that show the average political affiliations of various professions. According to Carter:
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.
Verdant’s charts show the percentage within a particular occupation group who donate to Democrats (shown in blue), and the percentage that gives to Republicans (shown in red).
If you’ve got a few minutes, you might want to check out the full charts from Verdant Labs. Among the Fast Facts you’ll have at your fingertips are these:
- A majority of airline pilots are Republican; most flight attendants, however, are Democrat.
- Home builders = Republican; architects = Democrat.
- There’s a massive discrepancy between the political leanings of oil workers (who are overwhelmingly Republican) and environmentalists (overwhelmingly Democrat).
Illustration above is a screenshot taken from Verdant Labs’ interactive table on politics of professions.
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