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.
Matt Hadro was the political editor at Catholic News Agency through October 2021. He previously worked as CNA senior D.C. correspondent and as a press secretary for U.S. Congressman Chris Smith.