President-elect Donald Trump earned 58% of the vote from Catholics in Tuesday's election, 18 points better than Democrat Kamala Harris, according to exit polls.
Trump fared even better with Protestant voters, defeating Harris 63% to 36%. Catholics and Protestants accounted for 64% of the electorate that voted the Republican back to the White House with "shocking" numbers.
In 2020, Trump lost the Catholic vote to Joe Biden by 5 points. Further, Trump captured 53% of Latino Catholics in this election, up from the 28% he received from that subset in 2020.
"Catholic voters played a decisive role in the historic victory of Donald Trump and [Ohio Sen.] J.D. Vance, with some exit polls suggesting Trump defeated Harris among Catholics by a 14 point margin," Brian Burch, president of CatholicVote, said in a statement posted on X on Wednesday. "These numbers are shocking, and could prove to be the largest margin among Catholics in a presidential race in decades. Catholics proved again to be a critical voting bloc that cannot be ignored."
Neither Harris nor running mate Tim Walz identify as Catholic. Harris is Baptist, and Walz is Lutheran.
The Catholic Association's Ashley McGuire, senior fellow of the organization, said in a statement, "Kamala Harris ran an anti-Catholic campaign. Whether mocking Catholic school girls or insisting Catholic doctors be forced to perform abortions, Harris made no efforts to hide her disdain for people of faith and disregard for religious liberty. Thankfully the voters rejected that extremism. President Trump will take office with a mandate to reject anti-Catholic extremism and restore the safeguards around America's First Freedom."
Faith & Freedom Coalition founder Ralph Reed told the Daily Caller that Harris and Democrats have a "lethal" religious problem.
"This is not the first time we've had a postelection-survey news conference where we have said, yet again, the Democrats have a religion problem, and it is serious," Reed told the Daily Caller.
"Biden was able to square that circle by personally talking about the seriousness of his faith and being seen frequently attending Mass and, you know, meeting the pope or leaving a service and talking to the father, the priest and so forth. Those visual images really matter," Reed said. "Meanwhile, he was going to the progressive left and saying, you have my entire domestic policy brief, whatever you want to do."