Obama Lost Catholic Voters In Louisiana and Other Critical States

Our Sunday Visitor has a good overview of the Catholic vote in the 08 election.

This part is very interesting:
The exit poll results currently break out the Catholic vote in about half of the states, giving us a more nuanced view.
At the state-level, Obama outpaced his national gain of 7 percentage points over the Kerry vote of 2004 in Florida, New Hampshire, New Mexico, New York, Vermont, and Delaware. In six states Obama lost ground to Kerry's Catholic vote totals of 2004. Catholics in Missouri, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Louisiana, Minnesota, and California were less likely than Catholics in 2004 to vote for the Democratic presidential candidate. In both Missouri and Pennsylvania, Catholic bishops made statements, widely covered by the media, regarding the importance of life issues relative to other issues in the campaign. These statements potentially had an effect on the votes of Catholics in these states given Obama's voting record and support for abortion. In California voters approved a ballot proposition banning same-sex marriage that was supported by California bishops. It is not possible to isolate these potential effects with the exit poll data released so far but these are potential hypothesis to explore further.

As people do their various post mortems I still find it shocking that the Obama MONEY advantage is not talked about more. That came into play especially in the largely below the MSM radar battle for the Hispanic vote that affects the Catholic numbers.

OSV mentions this:
Obama got into voters minds
Obama's capacity to key in on issues of importance among voters may be directly related to the unprecedented amount of money his campaign spent on research and polling. The currently available campaign expenditure reports from OpenSecrets.org, covering the start of the campaign through the end of August 2008, indicate Obama's campaign spent more than $21 million dollars on research of which nearly $8 million was specifically used on polling. By comparison, McCain spent only $1.7 million on research of which $1 million was dedicated to polling. Obama's investment in research also towers over the $3.7 million spent by Kerry and $1.9 million spent by President Bush in their 2004 campaigns.