Thanks Ryan. Always look forward to reading your LDS posts.
My personal take on your high LDS engagement is teaching on being a "peculiar" people. LDS people are taught to be "in the world not of the world" and be "peculiar." I think religion is often a large part of an LDS identity (since it is a high demand religion) and LDS want to see how their "peculiarity" plays out in the data.
I particularly enjoyed the moderate-only analysis which I feel paints a good picture of LDS politics the last few elections. I'm excited to see how the LDS youngest cohort plays out in future elections.
This is excellent work, Ryan; thank you! Two points: 1) To me, the most relevant piece of data was the expansion of self-identifying “moderates” among LDS voters who otherwise consider themselves (and presumably have a history of voting as) Democrats, Independents, and Republicans. The tiny “liberal” segment remains essentially unchanged across the partisan board, but the number of historical Mormon Democrats and Independents who consider themselves “conservative” is where you’ve seen the real drop. It’s a version of the same ideology-to-party sorting that’s been taking place among voters generally for a couple of generations; it’s nice to see data that is able to put numbers to that trend among American Mormons as well. 2) Why do you hear more from Mormons than from Muslims, Buddhists, etc.? I would guess it's because American Mormons (speaking as one myself) tend to punch above our weight, politically speaking--look at the comparatively unrepresentatively large LDS presence in Congress, for example--and so we have a large cohort of folks already oriented to see ourselves in national studies, forgetting that we're actually a really tiny minority.
Interest in LDS centers on three things: 1. they are highly educated, and therefore overrepresented, especially within the FBI/CIA. 2. They have higher fertility (now declining) which makes them interesting to natalists. 3. They combine contemporary conservative and moderate attitudes with a history of radicalism (polygamy, racism). This paradox attracts interest.
This is tough for me. Mostly because I kind of feel like you can't assess any of this information using 2012 as a relevant baseline due to the Romney effect. And 2016 is just as bad with McMullin. But if you look at the trends from 2008 to 2020 or 2024, the trend line seems pretty clear. LDS members are less republican, more democratic, more independent. And maybe the only thing preventing that from being a bigger shift is young LDS members simply following the same trend as all young voters from 2020 to 2024. Can't say I agree with all the conclusions you have made.
Part of the problem was that Trump had no record in 2016. He had one in 2020 and 2024 which helped people realize that many of their interests were still being valued even if he in his character reflects more of the villains of the Book of Mormon that Latter-day Saints are taught to avoid. There's still a big discomfort, and as Alex points out in his Substack, the Evan McMullin voters have moved to the Democrats.
I would guess -- and would be curious if this is supported -- that, taking the 3 B's, more liberal members of the LDS are much weaker on Belief and somewhat weaker on the Behavior parts of religious practice.
Ken Jennings is an unusual person, but he still seems illustrative. Based on his public comments, he seems to have rejected a fair amount of LDS teaching [low on Belief] while still being actively and unapologetically involved in the organization [high in Behavior and Belonging]. His political beliefs seem to be solidly center-left, well within the mainstream of the Democratic Party, aside from taking issue with certain statements made towards the LDS.
I recall some of Ryan's previous data was leading me to a conclusion that LDS identity is one of the "stickiest" among religious traditions in the US, in that people who mostly ditch the Behavior and Belief parts of the 3 B's will still identify as Mormon (Belonging). The LDS has a strong internal culture. A certain type of person that struggles with Belief just doesn't want to ditch that experience and those connections. Especially at a time when social capital across the broader society is disintegrating. Disintegrating social capital also seems to play a role in the apparently declining rate of attrition amongst Plain People.
But I also see a pattern (not just in the LDS) in which people that are weaker on Belief are much less likely to pass the faith down to their kids. I went to a Catholic HS and the pattern is night and day; AFAICT every family that was mostly cultural Catholic produced Millennial kids that have ditched Catholicism entirely. Some apostasy among the more devout, but not 100% apostasy.
In your tweet about this article you said "It's hard to know the 'default' distribution of LDS votes" and suggested it's maybe 70% GOP. I wonder if the data on congressional representative voting is a reasonable way to approximate this. It looks like that's settled on ~72–75% GOP in the past decade.
Thanks Ryan. Always look forward to reading your LDS posts.
My personal take on your high LDS engagement is teaching on being a "peculiar" people. LDS people are taught to be "in the world not of the world" and be "peculiar." I think religion is often a large part of an LDS identity (since it is a high demand religion) and LDS want to see how their "peculiarity" plays out in the data.
I particularly enjoyed the moderate-only analysis which I feel paints a good picture of LDS politics the last few elections. I'm excited to see how the LDS youngest cohort plays out in future elections.
Cheers!
This is excellent work, Ryan; thank you! Two points: 1) To me, the most relevant piece of data was the expansion of self-identifying “moderates” among LDS voters who otherwise consider themselves (and presumably have a history of voting as) Democrats, Independents, and Republicans. The tiny “liberal” segment remains essentially unchanged across the partisan board, but the number of historical Mormon Democrats and Independents who consider themselves “conservative” is where you’ve seen the real drop. It’s a version of the same ideology-to-party sorting that’s been taking place among voters generally for a couple of generations; it’s nice to see data that is able to put numbers to that trend among American Mormons as well. 2) Why do you hear more from Mormons than from Muslims, Buddhists, etc.? I would guess it's because American Mormons (speaking as one myself) tend to punch above our weight, politically speaking--look at the comparatively unrepresentatively large LDS presence in Congress, for example--and so we have a large cohort of folks already oriented to see ourselves in national studies, forgetting that we're actually a really tiny minority.
Interest in LDS centers on three things: 1. they are highly educated, and therefore overrepresented, especially within the FBI/CIA. 2. They have higher fertility (now declining) which makes them interesting to natalists. 3. They combine contemporary conservative and moderate attitudes with a history of radicalism (polygamy, racism). This paradox attracts interest.
Dying to see the gender split among young LDS, if sample allows!
Pretty small sample size but this is the 2024 result.
https://i.imgur.com/0bkqmbf.png
This is tough for me. Mostly because I kind of feel like you can't assess any of this information using 2012 as a relevant baseline due to the Romney effect. And 2016 is just as bad with McMullin. But if you look at the trends from 2008 to 2020 or 2024, the trend line seems pretty clear. LDS members are less republican, more democratic, more independent. And maybe the only thing preventing that from being a bigger shift is young LDS members simply following the same trend as all young voters from 2020 to 2024. Can't say I agree with all the conclusions you have made.
Part of the problem was that Trump had no record in 2016. He had one in 2020 and 2024 which helped people realize that many of their interests were still being valued even if he in his character reflects more of the villains of the Book of Mormon that Latter-day Saints are taught to avoid. There's still a big discomfort, and as Alex points out in his Substack, the Evan McMullin voters have moved to the Democrats.
I would guess -- and would be curious if this is supported -- that, taking the 3 B's, more liberal members of the LDS are much weaker on Belief and somewhat weaker on the Behavior parts of religious practice.
Ken Jennings is an unusual person, but he still seems illustrative. Based on his public comments, he seems to have rejected a fair amount of LDS teaching [low on Belief] while still being actively and unapologetically involved in the organization [high in Behavior and Belonging]. His political beliefs seem to be solidly center-left, well within the mainstream of the Democratic Party, aside from taking issue with certain statements made towards the LDS.
I recall some of Ryan's previous data was leading me to a conclusion that LDS identity is one of the "stickiest" among religious traditions in the US, in that people who mostly ditch the Behavior and Belief parts of the 3 B's will still identify as Mormon (Belonging). The LDS has a strong internal culture. A certain type of person that struggles with Belief just doesn't want to ditch that experience and those connections. Especially at a time when social capital across the broader society is disintegrating. Disintegrating social capital also seems to play a role in the apparently declining rate of attrition amongst Plain People.
But I also see a pattern (not just in the LDS) in which people that are weaker on Belief are much less likely to pass the faith down to their kids. I went to a Catholic HS and the pattern is night and day; AFAICT every family that was mostly cultural Catholic produced Millennial kids that have ditched Catholicism entirely. Some apostasy among the more devout, but not 100% apostasy.
We are a record keeping people.
I would love to see how this breaks out for Jews Muslims, and other groups. Though they may not be big enough to register in the data. 😞
2024 Election Post-Mortem: Jews runs on June 9, 2025.
2024 Election Post-Mortem: Muslims runs on July 28, 2025.
Yay 🥳
In your tweet about this article you said "It's hard to know the 'default' distribution of LDS votes" and suggested it's maybe 70% GOP. I wonder if the data on congressional representative voting is a reasonable way to approximate this. It looks like that's settled on ~72–75% GOP in the past decade.
I thought I'd drop in the Salt Lake Tribune's spin on this. Thanks for the research!
https://archive.ph/N6p3G
It’s interesting that you didn’t examine the LDS votes by gender.
In the 2012 election cycle between Romney and Obama, I'd like to know what impact Romney has with Mormons because of his religious affiliation.
Obviously a positive one but would be interesting to see that quantified.
Sometimes statistics can be so disheartening.