Catholic News 2
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Latest on the presidential campaign (all times EST):...
MANCHESTER, N.H. (AP) -- With the cloud of an FBI investigation lifted, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump struck strikingly different tones as they moved into the final hours of a volatile, nearly two-years long presidential campaign....
Washington D.C., Nov 6, 2016 / 02:02 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- A new poll released Friday shows Donald Trump winning the Catholic vote by 16 points – but is it an accurate prediction of how Catholics will vote next Tuesday?“We just don't have enough data to say anything very reliable this year,” cautioned Dr. Mark Gray of the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate, which conducts social science research on the Catholic Church, at Georgetown University.“The Exit Polls will provide better insight but we won't see these until after the fact,” he told CNA.Of all the general election polls, only a few of them have reported the religious affiliations of respondents. And for those that have, their revelations of the Catholic vote vary widely.The latest survey of likely voters by Investor’s Business Daily and TechnoMetrica Market Intelligence shows Catholics supporting Trump by a 16-point margin – 54 to 38 percent, with three percent suppo...
Washington D.C., Nov 6, 2016 / 02:02 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- A new poll released Friday shows Donald Trump winning the Catholic vote by 16 points – but is it an accurate prediction of how Catholics will vote next Tuesday?
“We just don't have enough data to say anything very reliable this year,” cautioned Dr. Mark Gray of the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate, which conducts social science research on the Catholic Church, at Georgetown University.
“The Exit Polls will provide better insight but we won't see these until after the fact,” he told CNA.
Of all the general election polls, only a few of them have reported the religious affiliations of respondents. And for those that have, their revelations of the Catholic vote vary widely.
The latest survey of likely voters by Investor’s Business Daily and TechnoMetrica Market Intelligence shows Catholics supporting Trump by a 16-point margin – 54 to 38 percent, with three percent supporting the Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson. Four percent are “not sure” who they will support.
While an Oct. 21 IBD/TIPP survey had Trump winning Catholic voters 49 to 36 percent, with five percent voting for Johnson, Trump’s lead narrowed to just 46 to 41 percent on Oct. 28, with Johnson’s support increasing to eight percent.
However, after the FBI announced Oct. 28 that it was again investigating Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server from her time as Secretary of State, Trump’s margin of support among Catholics increased again to 16 percent by Friday, Nov. 4.
Other polls – conducted before the FBI’s Oct. 28 announcement – show markedly different results in the Catholic vote.
A Pew Research poll, released Oct. 27, showed Clinton narrowly winning the Catholic vote among registered voters, 46 to 44 percent.
The Public Religion Research Institute, meanwhile, showed Trump winning among White Catholics 48 to 41 in a compilation of surveys from Sept. 22 to Oct. 17, but Clinton winning Latino Catholics by a vast margin, 84 percent to 12 percent.
What is to be made of these poll numbers?
“There is so much volatility in the polls in what appears to be a close race,” Dr. Gray noted, and in what is expected to be a close race, that “volatility” will be magnified.
“We also have fewer polls this year than in previous elections,” he added, and “on top of that the Catholic sample is typically 18 percent to 25 percent of survey respondents so the problems with margin of error are even bigger. You get more volatility with a smaller sample.”
Thus, it is hard to accurately predict how the general public will vote, much less a sub-group like Catholic voters, he said.
Joshua Mercer, co-founder of CatholicVote.org, agreed that the Catholic vote is hard to predict with certainty right now.
There has been “a lot more fluidity” in the public’s support for the candidates this year than in 2012, he noted. “Overall, there’s a lot less polling,” he added, which means that “there’s a lot less information to go around.”
Ultimately, the election result may come down to several key swing states like Florida, North Carolina, Colorado, and Ohio, he said, and those states have sizeable Catholic populations. “They are all states where Catholic voters are going to decide the next president,” he insisted.
Catholics are expected to vote as the rest of the populace votes, as this has been the case in recent elections.
Catholics have voted along with the popular vote in the last few presidential elections, choosing Al Gore in 2000 when Gore won the popular vote but lost the electoral vote, as well as voting for George W. Bush in 2004 and Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012, always mirroring the rest of the electorate.
In the mid-term elections, Catholics went for the victorious party, voting for Democrats in 2006 when the party took control of Congress, and then voting for the victorious Republicans in 2010 and 2014.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Latest on the presidential campaign (all times EST):...
WASHINGTON (AP) -- In a letter sent Sunday, FBI Director James Comey told Congress that a review of newly discovered Hillary Clinton emails has "not changed our conclusions" from earlier this year that she should not face charges....
CLEVELAND (AP) -- In an extraordinary last-minute twist to a volatile campaign, FBI director James Comey lifted the cloud he had placed over Hillary Clinton, saying Sunday the bureau had found no evidence in its hurried review of newly discovered emails to warrant criminal charges against her....
ROTTERDAM, Netherlands (AP) -- Justin Bieber's "Beliebers" helped turn him into the biggest winner Sunday at the MTV EMA European music awards. Again....
WOODRUFF, S.C. (AP) -- The Latest on the investigation after a missing woman was found chained inside a storage container (all times local):...
(Vatican Radio) Voters in Bulgaria were choosing on Sunday a new president who will likely have to face an expected rise in migrantsfleeing war and poverty from neighboring Turkey and growing tensions between Russia and the West. For the first time, voting was compulsory forthe country's 6.8 million eligible voters, but none of the 21 candidates was expected to win the required 50 percent of the vote to win, promptinga presidential runoff later on November 13.Listen to Stefan Bos' report Bulgaria's Prime Minister Boiko Borisov, a former bodyguard with a black belt in karate, appeared upbeat as he cast hisballot: Polls showed his center right GERB party's presidential candidate Tsetska Tsacheva, who is 58, was seen the front runner in Sunday'selectron.Yet to become the first female president of this country of 7.2 million people, Tsacheva must defeat the 53-year-old opposition Socialistcontender Rumen Radev, a former fighter pilot and Bulgarian air force chief.I...
(Vatican Radio) Voters in Bulgaria were choosing on Sunday a new president who will likely have to face an expected rise in migrants
fleeing war and poverty from neighboring Turkey and growing tensions between Russia and the West. For the first time, voting was compulsory for
the country's 6.8 million eligible voters, but none of the 21 candidates was expected to win the required 50 percent of the vote to win, prompting
a presidential runoff later on November 13.
Listen to Stefan Bos' report
Bulgaria's Prime Minister Boiko Borisov, a former bodyguard with a black belt in karate, appeared upbeat as he cast his
ballot: Polls showed his center right GERB party's presidential candidate Tsetska Tsacheva, who is 58, was seen the front runner in Sunday's
electron.
Yet to become the first female president of this country of 7.2 million people, Tsacheva must defeat the 53-year-old opposition Socialist
contender Rumen Radev, a former fighter pilot and Bulgarian air force chief.
If Tsacheva is elected, she is widely expected to continue the pro-Europe foreign policy of outgoing president Rosen Plevneliev.
Her main opponent is seen as more sympathetic to Russia.
RUSSIAN TIES
Radev has repeatedly said he would comply with Bulgaria's European obligations but has called for better relations with Moscow and called for
lifting sanctions against Russia, arguing that "being pro-European does not mean being anti-Russian."
At the same time, the new president is expected to face a new influx of especially Syrian refugees from neighboring Turkey, putting additional
pressure in what is the European Union's poorest member state.
The political battle about the political direction and future of this Balkan nation, once a close ally of the Soviet Union,
comes amid public outrage over corruption and Western style reforms.
That's why the front runners still face a challenge from nationalist backed candidate Krasimir Karakachanov. "We are not going to a presidential campaign," he told supporters last week. "We are leaving for a battle for the liberation of Bulgaria! The liberation from the nihilism, from the corrupted and hatred political class, from the corruption and buying votes, foreign interference and poverty."
BEIRUT (AP) -- U.S.-backed Syrian forces on Sunday said they would march on the northern city of Raqqa, the de facto capital of the Islamic State group's self-styled caliphate....
