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Despite positioning himself as the leading religious Republican candidate, known to be a daily Mass-goer, Catholic Rick Santorum has failed to win the Catholic vote in any state.
Instead, he has performed will among the evangelical Christian voters.
Santorum, who has spoken spoken with a conservative voice on social issues, a man who seeks prayers as well as votes and placed a strong emphasis on family life, received another setback in the strongly-Catholic Puerto Rico primary when Mitt Romney crushed his rivals.
Romney’s “Catholic-vote” advantage over Santorum is reported to be above 20 percentage points.
Searching to find out why, the only reason Santorum could pose was the religious fervour of Catholics is less uniform than the evangelicals.
“You know, I really wish I could tell you. The bottom line is that we do well among people who take their faith seriously, and as you know, just like some Protestants are not churchgoing, they are folks who identify with a particular religion but don’t necessarily practice that from the standpoint of going to church and the like. And I think folks who do practice their religion more ardently, I think we do well [with them], Santorum told Sandy Rios of American Family Radio.
“Just being Catholic by no means buys you anything in the Catholic vote anymore,” said Mark Gray, a researcher at Georgetown University’s Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate, who specializes in American Catholics.
Only 20% of Catholics on average said it mattered “a great deal” that a candidate share their religious beliefs, compared with one-third of non-Catholics in exit polls that asked the question.
According the the Pew Research Centre, some Catholics have mistaken Santorum’s rather black and white, good and evil, moralistic campaign as one conducted by a conservative Protestant.
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