Has the Catholic vote re-emerged from decades of being buried in the political consensus? The latest result from the Investors Business Daily/TIPP tracking poll puts the presidential race at a dead heat, but not among Catholics in its sample. Donald Trump has a 20-point lead in that religious demographic, almost as large as among Protestants.

LifeZette’s Elisa Cipollone picked up on the odd result yesterday, when the split was 13 points:

This stunning new poll is a dramatic change from numbers reported earlier, particularly before the Clinton campaign’s disparaging emails about Catholics were leaked.

In the now infamous “Catholic Spring” emails, Sandy Newman, president and founder of the progressive nonprofit Voices for Progress, wrote to John Podesta concerning the tenets of the Catholic faith and how to convince this often socially conservative voting bloc to come out for Clinton. …

That attempt to manipulate Catholic voters encouraged “individual bishops to more publicly voice support of economic and racial justice messages in order to begin to create a critical mass of bishops who are aligned with the pope,” read the report on the effectiveness of this initiative.

Through these very clear attempts to manipulate the tenets of a 2,000-year-old religion, the polls have begun to reflect that Catholics are tired of Clinton campaign corruption.

Perhaps, but don’t bet on it — or at least don’t rely on this poll for that conclusion. As a Catholic and as an analyst, this doesn’t add up, even though I’d really hope it would. For this to be accurate even within this poll, one would have to conclude that the Catholic vote has become substantially divorced (heh) from the broad political consensus. Other than Podesta’s e-mails and maaaaayyyyyybeeeeee Hillary’s insistence on repealing the Hyde Amendment, we have not seen much of a triggering event for such a big change.

How big would it be? In 2012, Barack Obama won the Catholic vote 50/48 on his way to a 51/46 win over Mitt Romney. He won Catholics by nine points in 2008 on his way to a seven-point victory. Bush beat Kerry in 2004 by three points while winning Catholics by five. Al Gore won the popular vote by a hair in 2000, but won Catholics by seven points. In 1996, Bill Clinton won Catholics by seven while beating Bob Dole by 8.5 points.

Furthermore, this stands in somewhat stark contrast to other polling. The WaPo/ABC tracking poll doesn’t offer Catholics as a whole as a reported demographic, but it does show Trump leading among white Catholics by thirteen points. However, Hispanics make up a significant percentage of Catholic voters in the US — and they’re not exactly yuuuuge fans of Trump. According to a new WaPo/Univision poll, Hillary’s winning among Hispanics as a whole by a 67/19 margin.

If Trump actually was carrying all Catholics by 20 points, one would expect to see a landslide lead for the Republican in the same poll, especially while leading among Protestants by 22. Instead he’s just 0.3 points behind Hillary. This suggests that the Catholic component of the sample of 867 LVs is too small to be reliable. That strange outlier calls the IBD/TIPP calculation of the race into question, too.

For the past twenty years (and probably much longer), there hasn’t really been a distinctive Catholic political vote, not in the way that evangelicals and Protestants in general tend to act as a bloc. If Catholics were to break that trend in one direction or another, one would have to suspect it would be to support a Catholic candidate or to back someone much more in line with Catholic political and social thought. That doesn’t describe either candidate in this election, especially Hillary, so expect Catholics to end up on the winning side of this election … whichever it will be.

However, for Catholic voters still discerning on their choices, Joshua Mercer offers up this advice from Bishop William Murphy of Rockville Center, Long Island at CatholicVote:

Bishop Murphy posed three questions he wanted Catholics to reflect on before making their decision and casting their ballot:

1. Do you think our country is going in the right direction or the wrong direction? I believe it is heading in the wrong direction. If I am right, then,

2. Of the two candidates running for president, and of all of the candidates running for elective office, whether federal, state or local, which ones will continue to lead us in the current direction or which are more likely to restore justice in those areas that cry out for such a restoration?

3. Which ones are willing to lead us in a direction that is more pro life, more pro family and more pro truth? Which ones will recognize and respect the role of religion in the lives of citizens and the Church’s right to mediate the truths of the Gospel and the Church’s teaching as part of the public life of our country, in public ministries like health care, education and charitable works, without being forced to adopt and facilitate those cultural practices that are not consonant with Church teaching?

Sounds like good advice for all people of faith, and not just Catholics.