A Minnesota voter wears his "I Voted" sticker after casting an early ballot in St. Paul Nov. 1, 2024. National Catholic Reporter named the Catholic voter its Newsmaker of the Year. (OSV News/Maria Wiering)
by James V. Grimaldi
No other topic dominated the news more in 2024 than the national elections, which was true even for the National Catholic Reporter. The year started as a rematch of the 2020 presidential contest with Joe Biden against Donald Trump. By Nov. 7, that race pitted Trump against Vice President Kamala Harris.
At NCR, we wanted to know what Catholic voters thought, so we commissioned a first-of-its-kind poll of voters in the battleground states, the so-called swing states that have been pivotal in presidential elections.
According to our poll, the Catholic voters in those states decisively sided with Trump. And it was a pretty good predictor. While some pollsters muffed it, NCR's poll was dead-on.
That prompted extensive scrutiny, analysis, and handwringing by NCR editorial writers, columnists, commentators, and journalists. Heidi Schlumpf examined the exit polls and followed up this week with another salient examination of Hispanic Catholic voters.
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Nancy Pelosi, the second most potent Catholic politician in America, told NCR in an exclusive interview that it was time for a regime change — younger pols in the ranks of Democratic leadership in committee leadership. Michael Sean Winters warned us that the Catholic vote could be decisive — albeit elusive — and then told us it could be the antidote to save the Democratic Party.
National political pundits joined NCR analysts to ask whether the Catholic vote exists, how it voted, and whether it was decisive. You can read our editorial dissecting the Catholic voter here.
In a year when Donald Trump was Time magazine's Person of the Year, NCR's Newsmaker of the Year made perfect sense. Catholics overall supported Trump, and Hispanic Catholics edged closer to the Republican nominee — though let's not lose sight of the fact that overall, most Hispanic Catholics backed Harris.
The Catholic electorate intrigues, baffles, surprises, bemuses, confounds, and makes news. Because of this, the NCR staff determined that the Catholic voter was the NCR Newsmaker of the Year for 2024.
