Church and state rarely mix in America. But that’s not the case this time.
Because the Catholic Church handed President Trump a gift that’s dropping jaws.
Catholic Voters Stand Firmly Behind Trump One Year into His Second Term
A year after the 2024 presidential election that brought him back to the White House, President Donald Trump retains strong and steady support among Catholic voters—the very demographic whose decisive backing helped secure his victory—according to a new EWTN News/RealClear Opinion Research poll.
Solid Majority of Catholics Support Large-Scale Deportation Policy Despite Criticism from Church Leaders
The most visible and polarizing initiative of Trump’s new term—the ongoing operation to detain and deport hundreds of thousands of illegal or undocumented immigrants—has generated sustained street protests, wall-to-wall media coverage, and repeated public statements of concern or outright condemnation from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and numerous individual bishops.
Pope Leo XIV has addressed the policy critically on multiple occasions, continuing the approach taken by his predecessor, Pope Francis.
In spite of that high-profile ecclesiastical opposition, the poll shows that a clear majority of Catholic voters back the administration’s actions.
Fifty-four percent say they support the detention and deportation of unauthorized immigrants on a broad scale, while thirty percent are opposed and seventeen percent express neither support nor opposition. Support reaches sixty percent among white Catholic voters, with only twenty-six percent opposed.
Among Latino Catholics, who are disproportionately affected by the enforcement measures, the community is nearly evenly divided: forty-one percent in favor and thirty-nine percent opposed.
Inflation, Not Immigration, Dominates Catholic Priorities
Immigration, for all its prominence in the national conversation, is not the chief concern of Catholic voters. Only fifteen percent identified mass deportation or related border-security promises as the campaign commitment they most want President Trump to fulfill.
By a commanding margin, reducing inflation emerged as the overwhelming top priority, named by forty percent of respondents—more than double the combined total of the next several issues, including shrinking the federal government, protecting religious freedom, and ending the war in Ukraine.
Trump himself continues to be viewed favorably by fifty-two percent of Catholic voters, with thirty-seven percent holding an unfavorable view and eleven percent neutral—numbers virtually identical to his Catholic vote share in 2024.
Notably, the president enjoys higher personal favorability among Catholics than two prominent Catholic members of his administration: Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Pope Leo XIV, by comparison, registers a seventy percent favorability rating in the same survey.
The poll of one thousand self-identified Catholic voters—conducted November 9–11, 2025, with a credibility interval of plus or minus three percentage points—confirms persistent internal differences shaped by frequency of Mass attendance, gender, ethnicity, and partisan identification.
More devout practitioners, men, white Catholics, and Republican-leaning Catholics consistently show the highest levels of support for both the president personally and for his deportation policy, while less frequent Massgoers, women, Latino Catholics, and Democratic-leaning Catholics register lower enthusiasm.
