Griper Blade: Misreading the Catholic Vote

It's always fun to feign perplexity over polling. Basically, it works this way; a bunch of pundits agree on a narrative -- often based on stereotypes. They take their assumptions and run with them, until everyone starts thinking that they have some sort of basis in fact, rather than speculation. Then, when polling comes out showing the speculation to be exactly wrong, the head-scratching ensues.

So it is with a new Gallup poll. In that poll, Romney leads among the "very religious," while Obama leads among everyone else (the "very religious" are a minority, by the way). None of this is very surprising -- the religious nuts always go for the Republican. But what has the pundits all confused is that President Obama leads among Catholic voters.

This is a serious variation from the accepted pundit groupthink. That whole contraception coverage thing was supposed to be a big problem for Obama. Yet here they are backing him anyway. The word "despite" is used in just about every story and post dealing with this I've seen so far; Catholics back Obama "despite" the whole BC thing...[CLICK TO READ FULL POST]