Catholic voters in Pennsylvania could decide the outcome of the election. That’s how they feel about Trump, Harris and Biden.

PITTSBURGH (AP) Nationally, Catholic voters were divided in the recent presidential election. They are likely to make up at least a quarter of the electorate this year in the vital state of Pennsylvania and thus play a key role in determining the overall outcome.

The state is experiencing a see-saw effect. Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton by about 44,000 votes in 2016; Joe Biden defeated Trump by 80,000 votes in 2020.

John Fee, a history professor at Messiah University in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, said he believes Biden — an Irish-American Catholic and regular grassroots attendee — connects with some Catholics as one of them.

“I don’t think most working-class Catholics thought Biden was the ideal candidate, but he was one of them,” said Fea, who studies the intersection of religion and politics.

Now Trump, a nondenominational Christian, is back at the top of the Republican ticket, with J.D. Vance, a Catholic, his running mate.

Democrats have a non-Catholic ticket led by Kamala Harris, who is of Black and South Asian heritage and from a Baptist tradition with a strong social justice orientation, and her vice presidential running mate is Tim Walz, a white Lutheran.

Fea said some voters in counties around Biden’s hometown of Scranton may have voted for him in 2020 because of his Catholic ties but may not have voted for Harris.

“One could argue that the way these counties are doing… that’s the way Pennsylvania is doing, that’s the way the nation is doing,” Fea said.

An outspoken anti-abortion woman, Nikki Bruni of Pittsburgh says she could never vote for Harris. Trump has her vote, although she is alarmed that he is retreating from traditionally staunch GOP opposition.

“I thought about not voting, but Pennsylvania is a swing state,” said Bruni, who heads the local anti-abortion group People Concerned with Unborn Children. “I must do everything in my power morally to prevent evil from completely taking over.”

Catholics who support Harris feel a similar sense of urgency: In a state where more than a quarter of voters in 2020 were Catholic, the entire election could hinge on a handful of their coreligionists.

One group, Catholics Vote for the Common Good, recently put up billboards around Pittsburgh and Erie urging Catholics to consider the “common good”—a set of vital issues in Catholic social teaching—rather than just the single issue of abortion.

“If you’re going to be pro-life, you need to be more than just anti-abortion,” said Pennsylvania group chairman Kevin Hayes. “Immigration has a pro-life component. Healthcare has a pro-life component. Providing adequate support to young families and young mothers with children has a pro-life component.”

He also said Trump, with his verbal attacks on the judiciary and calling critics “the enemy from within,” poses a threat to democracy.

Although both campaigns attract Latino Catholic votes, most of Pennsylvania’s Catholic population is descended from white European immigrants, many of whom worked in mines and factories during the state’s industrial heyday. Their numbers have dwindled amid industrial decline and church scandals, but many still remain, their legacy marked by spiers and onion domes across the state.

“This is a demographic that cannot be overlooked,” said Hayes, who is among Catholics urging the Harris campaign to pay closer attention to them.

To be clear, there is no “Catholic vote” as there may have been in past generations when Catholics could be expected to lend their voice as a voting bloc.

But there are Catholic voters, and many of them.

In 2020, 27% of Pennsylvania voters identified as Catholic, according to AP VoteCast, and neighboring swing states Michigan and Wisconsin also have significant Catholic populations. A Franklin and Marshall poll taken in October suggested there could be competition among Catholics in the state.

Pennsylvania Catholics, overwhelmingly white and non-Hispanic, supported Trump over Biden that year by a margin of 55% to 44%, while the national Catholic vote, with a much larger share of Hispanics, was roughly evenly split.

Vance, now the only Catholic in the race, was heavily influenced by conservative Catholics. Still, he has supported Trump’s efforts to downplay abortion as a central issue, even as Trump still claims credit for Supreme Court appointees who helped overturn Roe v. Wade and bring the issue to the states.

Groups like CatholicVote support Trump and seek the Catholic vote.

Hayes and other Harris supporters urged her campaign to focus more on Pennsylvania Catholics, and they took their own steps.

A group of Catholics from Philadelphia recently took a bus to Wilkes-Barre, near Scranton, stopping along the way for Mass at a Polish Catholic church. They went door to door on behalf of their candidate before holding an evening campaign rally.

Tour organizer Steve Rukavina said the group is reaching out in particular to Catholics and others with origins in Poland, Ukraine and other Eastern European countries, including NATO countries.

He expressed concern that Trump has questioned NATO’s mission and repeatedly challenged the Biden-Harris administration’s direction of U.S. aid to Ukraine. Trump made vague promises to end the war and praised Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“I believe that a significant number of Polish and Ukrainian Americans will switch and vote for the Democratic ticket in 2024 because of the NATO and Ukraine issues, as well as the character issue,” Rukavina said.

The U.S. Catholic Bishops, in their guidance for Catholic voters, said opposing abortion “is our highest priority because it directly attacks our most vulnerable and voiceless brothers and sisters.”

They also mentioned issues that are not entirely consistent with either party’s platform, including pro-LGBTQ+ issues, threats to religious freedom, migrant suffering, racism, war and access to health care and education.

Fewer than half of Catholics said abortion was a “very important” issue when deciding how to vote, according to a late summer Pew Research Center poll. More than half named gun policy, foreign policy, Supreme Court appointments and health care, while two-thirds or more mentioned immigration, violent crime and the economy.

Trump supporter James Karamicki expressed some of these concerns after a recent Mass at St. Paul’s Cathedral in Pittsburgh. He criticized the Biden administration for its border policies and for sending multibillion-dollar aid to Ukraine.

“It’s too much money,” he said. “There are suffering people in this country: homeless people, veterinarians.”

Tatiana Rad, a Trump supporter and Ukrainian Catholic immigrant, said the former president was the obvious choice.

Rad grew up in the former Soviet Union, where Catholics were persecuted, and she believes Republicans are more accepting of religion. She supports Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration and believes he will live up to his claim that he will stop the war in Ukraine.

“If America is strong, the whole world will look to America,” she said. “They need a strong leader.”

Brandon Freese, a University of Pittsburgh student who supports Harris, said her presidency would be the best choice to preserve democracy. He also sees moral problems with the Republican Party and Trump.

“Long-term suffering for the poor is not something that should be allowed to happen,” he said. “I feel like the Republican Party is not doing enough to alleviate the suffering of the poor.”

More about the elections: