We have the facts and we're voting yes

To start, I'm glad to be able to imitate D. Mike's LJ blog entry naming convention by choosing a Death Cab for Cutie phrase.

Statistics are ubiquitous. Institutions such as Gallup and USA Today release new results of major polls literally every day. These numbers are then added to the expanding ocean of information that contemporary Americans must attempt to navigate. Interestingly, poll numbers are less likely to dissolve into the mass and less likely to sink into the abyss than other sorts of information. Poll numbers are like flotsam and jetsam; they float on the surface above an incalculable depth of accumulated knowledge. They are easy to spot, easy to pick out, easy to go grab. They drift with the currents and roll with the waves.

Religion is a whole other catastrophe. Combining religion and statistics clouds the water furthermore, as not one but two disciplines of pseudo-knowing wash over the sediments of the truth. Plus, consider people's inclination to misunderstand and to distort, both knowingly and unknowingly, and say goodbye to the chance that any pithy stats about religion will tell you anything you really need to know. And, there are so very, very many. The maxim "The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose" surely has a correlative concerning the prevalence of statistics.

Nevertheless, I encourage you follow this link:

gallup.com/catholics

The crux of thing is that Catholics are rather liberal compared to non-Catholics. (Nota bene: the make-up of the group labeled "non-Catholics" can be understood to largely consist of all manner of non-Catholic Christians (a.k.a. Protestants) and not just atheists and agnostics.)