President Donald Trump and Joe Biden are statistically tied among Catholic voters in six battleground states, according to a new poll by EWTN News/Real Clear Opinion Research.
Overall, 52 percent say they support Biden, compared with 40 percent who support Trump. But Biden leads by just 4 percentage points in Arizona, Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, 48-44, which is within the poll’s margin of error.
Trump won the Catholic vote over Hillary Clinton in 2016 by 7 percentage points, but these poll results should be a “wakeup call” for the president, says RealClear Opinion Research polling director John Della Vope.
"If President Trump wants to change his polling among Catholics, this data suggests it would be wise to address the concerns they have about the coronavirus and the economy," Volpe said.
A majority said the following were major concerns: economy and jobs (73%), coronavirus (68%), health care (67%), and civil unrest (53%).
Trump, though, may have scored some points by nominating Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court.
Forty-six percent said they support Coney Barrett’s nomination, compared with 28 percent who say they oppose it.
"Likely Catholic voters favor the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett by almost twenty percentage points, and a majority also agree that her faith should not be considered by the U.S. Senate in the confirmation process," Matthew Bunson, executive editor of EWTN News, said in a release. "These are concerns among Catholics about religious liberty that we have been tracking in our previous polls, and clearly Catholics do not like policies or politics that threaten to use religious attacks to achieve a specific agenda."