Catholics now represent the latest demographic challenge for Donald Trump's presidential ambitions. As the Washington Post recently reported, a poll from the Public Religion Research Institute found that Catholic voters preferred Hillary Clinton to Trump by a crushing 23 percent margin, 55-32. With less than a third of Catholics intending to vote for him, Trump has fallen well below the support GOP candidates typically enjoy from Catholic voters. George W. Bush won the Catholic vote in his 2004 reelection, 52-47. Although John McCain and Mitt Romney both lost among Catholic voters, they still managed to win 45 percent and 48 percent, respectively. [...]

Writing in National Review earlier this summer, the political scientist Michael J. New commented that Trump's "Catholic problem" likely stemmed from Trump's harsh rhetoric on Latino immigrants who many American Catholics see positively as the future of their church, but also because of Trump's attacks on Pope Francis.