Deep Dive: Catholic Vote

>>> independent vote was the best indicator which way a presidential election is heading, think again. romney won by five points. he still lost. john kerry won independents in 2004 . he lost. today taking a deep dive into what may be the most accurate predictor of all the subgroups of presidential outcomes, the catholic vote. catholics made up a quarter of the electorate in 2012 and for the third election in a row the skrout come of the catholic vote nearly mirrored the overall vote almost exactly. let me show you here and get inside these numbers here. look at this. george w. bush 2004 . he won catholic voters, 52% to 47%. and he won the election 51% to 48%. let's move on. this is barack obama in 2008 . catholic voters 54% to 45%. overall election 53% to 46%. just a two-point deviation overall. nine points versus seven here. let's look at 2012 . catholic vote 50% to 48%. overall vote 51% to 48%. just a one-point deviation if you will overall. something interesting inside the catholic vote. the president -- white catholics and nonwhite catholics and this mattered. look at this, the president lost white catholics in 2008 by just five points. it was actually a real hadly good showing for a democrat among white catholics . this time he lost white catholics 59% to 40%, nearly 20%. well, guess what made the difference? latino catholics . in 2008 he won 72% to 26%. when the percentage was lower than it is now. so in 2012 he won hispanic catholics by a greater margin and, as you know, hispanics made up a bigger portion of the electorate. so once again it gives you why the catholic vote overall gives you a nice mix in letting you know which way the country is heading. we know another of interest to folks was jewish voters, how is the president going to do? a lot of predictions among republicans that he wasn't going to do as well as he did four years ago. this was his number four years ago, 7 l% to 21%. well, those predictions about him doing worse were right. he got under 70% this time. mitt romney got the 30%. it is the best showing for a republican among jewish voters since 1988 when michael dukakis got only 64% and george h.w. bush got 35% of the jewish vote. so clearly some inroads were made there potential ly by mitt romney . there are some democrats that tell me they think there's a sandy effect on jewish voters because a lot of northeastern voters in general just didn't cast the amount of ballots and maybe the president would have gotten over 70%. we'll see in 2016 . our political panel will be here next. but first the white house soup of the day -- i think this should be the official soup of the fiscal cliff, 15 bean. these negotiations have to have a little bit of everything. a legume here, a legume there, taxes, entitlements, cuts, all represented by a different bean. wouldn't that be fun? [ male