Whoops. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Hillary Clinton lost Catholic votes between Pennsylvania, Indiana and North Carolina:

In Pennsylvania, Sen. Clinton beat Sen. Barack Obama by 40 points among Catholics. In Indiana, Sen. Obama sliced that deficit in half, earning 41% of the Catholic vote to Sen. Clinton's 59%. And in North Carolina Sen. Clinton won among Catholics by a scant seven points.

All sorts of reasons are advanced for this shift, most of which are more or less stupid. (Honestly, a "nun theory"?) The one I find persuasive is that Pennsylvania Catholics are a little more downscale than those in Indiana or particularly North Carolina. Clinton apparently resonates with the culturally conservative white working class - the union folks, who skew Catholic. But Obama's learning how to reach out to them, and as things go along, the rationale for a Clinton campaign keeps dropping, which has to hurt her with all the various demographics.

As it stands, she'll soon be forced out of the race anyway, but this is just one more piece of data suggested that her "electability" narrative is a crock.

I actually thought this was way more interesting:

In a recent survey of 19 states that have held a presidential primary this year, 63% of Catholics identified themselves as Democrats, compared with 37% for Republicans, a sharp increase from 2005 when 42% of Catholics identified themselves as Democrats. One of every four voters in the U.S. is Catholic.

Catholics have been a swing vote since the early 70's, and it looks like they're swinging right back into the Democratic camp. This does not bode well for the GOP: even a temporary shift in Catholic sentiment could be enough to establish the generational realignment that seems to be in the offing these days. As for John McCain: he needs to hold Texas and Florida and pick off at least one of the heavily Catholic Rust Belt states - Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, or Wisconsin - to have any, erm, prayer of taking the election.

Whoops.