July 05, 2006
The Mormon Question
Will Mitt Romney (R-MA) be an Al Smith or a John Kennedy?
In other words -- will his presidential bid reflect attitudes about Mormonism or will it shape them?
The Los Angeles Times and Bloomberg asked their sample of registered voters whether they'd ever vote for a Mormon presidential candidate. 35 percent said no.
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.
We'd love to see a similar poll that delves into support/opposition by denomination. Just a hunch, but we'd bet that Southern Baptist moral conservatives would have more objections than Catholic moral conservatives. What about Missouri Synod Lutherans? They're congregated throughout the Midwest and often in closer proximity to established Mormon communities. But their penchant for doctrinal purity is as strong as the Southern Baptists'.
Posted at 03:09 PM
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