Wednesday, July 05, 2006

Hotline Looks At The Mormon Question

The Hotline blog ponders the question of whether Gov. Mitt Romney's candidacy for president will be impeded because of his Mormon faith. The blog asks, "Will Mitt Romney be an Al Smith or a John Kennedy?" Hotline reflects on a recent poll showing that 35% of those polled said they would never vote for a Mormon presidential candidate:

The two groups most united in their opposition: liberal Democrats, of whom 40 percent were skittish, and more-than-once-a-week churchgoers, of whom a majority was opposed. (Note that these slices are taken from subsamples of a larger poll and are thus somewhat less precise).

Why?

It might be that Mormons are perceived as a fundamentally conservative denomination which scares modernist/secular Dems as much as their alleged heresy scares some evangelicals.
It might just be that the 2008 GOP presidential campaign will break down a barrier for Mormons much like Kennedy's 1960 presidential race did for Catholic candidates. While the poll would seem to suggest that Romney is going to have a real challenge with Christian fundamentalists, AI suspects that his supportive position on cultural issues will win out over any misgivings that these voters might have with Romney because he's a Mormon.

2 comments:

Doug said...

Eric Rasmusen had a post about this a couple of weeks ago, apparently after the Wall Street Journal mentioned it.

My comment there was:

I’ll admit, some of the Mormon beliefs of which I hear seem pretty bizarre to me. But, if I hadn’t been socialized to accept them as normal, I suppose some of the beliefs of, say, Catholicism would be troubling to me. Kennedy had to face some of the questions about whether he would have to obey the orders of the Pope. I don’t know if anyone ever asked him if he really believed he was eating blood and human flesh during mass.

But, at the end of the day, for political purposes, I guess it doesn’t matter how objectively weird one’s religious beliefs may or may not be, it only matters how socialized the electorate is to accept the beliefs.

Anonymous said...

Steve Osborn, the Libertarian candidate for the U.S. Senate seat currently held by Dick Lugar, is a member of the LDS church.

Let me go out on a limb here, but my prediction is that his religious affilation will not be a factor in the outcome of the November election.