ELECTION 08: Minority report, as Catholics trump swingles

News Hour sniffs the scent of ‘swing voters’, telling us that a key Democratic primary is on the way, and indeed it is – Pennsylvania kicks off on April 22. At CNN, it’s all about the swing voters, with their 15-minute latest political podcast (‘from the best political team’) featuring lengthy reports on no fewer than two of them. First up it’s the Catholics, weighing in at 70 million strong, or 20
per cent of the electorate.

The religious end has recently been excited by the visit of Pope Benedict XVI, and such was the overshadowing fervour of this trip that Gordon Brown’s journey across the Pond received very little attention whatsoever. One can only imagine that Brown planned it this way, as surely only the most wayward of Downing Street advisers (home of the ‘We don’t do God’ quote) would consider the British premier worthy of more notice than his Papal lordship. It is still Brown’s Mekon-like appearance on American Idol that looms largest in the mind, that and the image of him shuffling solo across the set of Good Morning America.

Still, even Catholics must cower at the might of the single woman – this vocal minority accounts for 26 per cent of the electorate but consistently punch below their weight due to not actually voting. What kind of a swing voting group is that? Presumably this army of American Bridget Joneses have been spending more time in bars than voting booths – before waking up, drunk and angry, demanding their say in the nation’s future. If one were to construct a Top Trumps set of American voting minorities, one could confidently predict the Catholics would outswing the single women (swingles?), although this is further complicated by the fact that some of
these single women might be Catholics, and vice versa. How many lapsed Catholics? Does this account for the fact that, according to CNN, 51 per cent of the Pope’s followers were pro-choice on abortion? Are these real Catholics? Who can say.

For the benefit of these drunken hordes, out of the stars of Sex And The
City, only Sarah Jessica Parker is overtly political – she’s a Democrat,
and her five-year-old son is an avid supporter of Barack Obama.