Young Mormons Aren’t Blue — They’re Just a Little Less Red

Utah is not a purple state.

Almost three years ago, in one of my first posts on Graphs about Religion, I ran an article with the headline: Young Mormons Are Abandoning the GOP. The most important piece of data analysis in that post came from the Nationscape survey — a weekly study conducted between 2019 and early 2021. The total sample size was over 477,000 respondents, which means there were nearly five thousand Latter-day Saints in the dataset.

I just ran a quick analysis of that LDS sample, looking at partisanship broken down by age. Here’s what that data looks like visualized:

The conclusion here is pretty straightforward: older Mormons are strongly Republican. In the Nationscape survey, nearly 70% of 60-year-old Latter-day Saints aligned with the GOP, while about 20% identified as Democrats and the remainder called themselves Independents. But as you move down the age ladder, that partisan gap starts to narrow.

Among 40-year-old Mormons, about 60% are Republicans and roughly 30% are Democrats — a fifty-point gap among older Latter-day Saints shrinks to thirty points. And among young adults, the divide gets even smaller, down to just 10–15 percentage points. The logical conclusion: the GOP is losing ground among what has traditionally been a rock-solid voting bloc.

Of course, that Nationscape data is a bit dated now. It was collected before Joe Biden took the oath of office and long before Trump’s bid for a second term. So, let’s revisit this question using more recent data. To start, I replicated that first graph with data from the most recent waves of the Cooperative Election Study (2022–2024). The total sample size is around 150,000, which gives us roughly 1,500 Latter-day Saints to work with.

Well, okay! What we saw in the Nationscape data seems to be continuing on the same trajectory. There’s obviously a huge partisan gap among older Latter-day Saints: about two-thirds of those in their sixties are Republicans, compared to only 20% who are Democrats. But the gap narrows faster here than in the earlier data.

For 40-year-olds, the difference between Republicans and Democrats is about 25 percentage points. And among the youngest adults in the sample, there’s evidence that Democrats and Republicans are at rough parity. In other words, young Mormons are almost perfectly politically divided.

That’s a big deal. But before you head to Twitter to fire off some BREAKING NEWS tweets (siren emoji and all), let’s pump the brakes, dig into the data, and add some nuance.

This is the same analysis, but I’ve grouped age into five categories. That’s probably the better call given the total sample size isn’t that large.

This graph definitely doesn’t tell as consistent a story as the previous one — which is exactly why it’s so important to approach data from multiple angles. As before, there’s a huge political gap among older Latter-day Saints: the divide is about 45–50 points among those 50 and older. But that gap does start to narrow among younger age cohorts.

The results for people in their thirties and forties aren’t quite what I expected, though. Ideally, we’d see a smooth trend — a gradual increase in Democrats and a steady decline in Republicans. That’s what usually happens in these kinds of graphs. So, I can’t help but wonder if we’re just seeing some noise here from a small religious group. Still, it’s fair to say that middle-aged Latter-day Saints are roughly 30% Democrats and 55% Republicans.

What about the youngest adults? The data shows that about 40% are Republicans, 35% are Democrats, and 25% are Independents. Statistically speaking, that means young LDS adults could be nearly evenly divided politically, given the sample size. What’s tricky, though, is that large share who call themselves Independents. Did they actually vote for Harris? Or are they Republicans in disguise?

I think the data tells a pretty consistent story on one key point: a lot of young Latter-day Saints claim political independence but end up voting Republican. If only 40% of young LDS identify as Republicans, yet 56% supported the GOP on Election Day, there’s really only one explanation — those self-described independents broke heavily toward Donald Trump.

And let me make sure this doesn’t get lost: a majority of Latter-day Saints between the ages of 18 and 35 voted for Donald Trump in 2024. That wasn’t true in either 2016 or 2020. There was also some movement toward Trump among LDS voters aged 36–50. So it’s tough to make the case that younger Mormons are trending leftward when you look at these results.

But let’s widen the lens a bit. Beyond partisanship and vote choice, how do younger Latter-day Saints compare to older ones on social issues? For instance, consider the question: “Should a woman always have the right to obtain an abortion as a matter of choice?” Here’s the share of LDS in favor over the last decade, broken down by age:

First, let’s start with the 40-and-over crowd. Their views on abortion have basically stayed the same over the past decade — roughly 30% in favor of allowing it. There’s maybe a slight uptick, but that’s probably just noise in the data. A solid majority of older Latter-day Saints continue to oppose abortion access.

What about younger Mormons? Here the data’s a bit noisier, given the smaller sample sizes — especially in off-year surveys. Still, there’s a general sense that younger Latter-day Saints have become somewhat more supportive of abortion access over time. About a decade ago, roughly a third favored allowing abortion for any reason. By 2020, that rose to 42%, and it stayed around 41% in 2022. But in 2024, that number dropped back to 33%, which is right where it was ten years ago.

So I’m not fully convinced that we’re seeing a clear shift toward social liberalism among younger Mormons. It’s a mixed picture at best.

Now, what about other social issues — things like gender identity and related questions?

This graph was incredibly instructive in showing how young Latter-day Saints compare to their older counterparts. For example, 51% of LDS ages 18–39 favor banning abortion pills sent through the mail, compared to 57% among those over 40 — a difference that isn’t statistically significant. The same is true for questions about banning gender transition for minors, restricting out-of-state abortions, requiring age verification for porn sites, and supporting school vouchers.

Think about that for a second — that’s strong evidence that young adult Latter-day Saints hold social policy views very similar to older ones. The only issue where there’s a clear generational split is over whether schools should require parental permission for students to change their pronouns. Mormons under 40 are divided on that question, while among those 40 and older, a solid majority — 81% — support requiring permission.

One last graph before I wrap up. This one’s an old favorite. Respondents are asked to place themselves, the two major parties, and Donald Trump on a seven-point scale ranging from very liberal to very conservative. Here’s how Latter-day Saints respond, broken down by age:

One thing that jumps out right away is that older Latter-day Saints clearly see the Democrats as more liberal than younger LDS do. But there’s some evidence that this perception is shifting. In the 2024 sample, younger LDS increasingly view the Democratic Party as moving leftward — almost matching how older Mormons see it.

Both age groups place themselves to the right of center, though older Latter-day Saints are noticeably more conservative. Younger Mormons are about 10% more likely to describe themselves as moderate. And while younger LDS still identify to the right, there’s now a bit of daylight between them and the Republican Party — whereas older Latter-day Saints remain closely aligned with the GOP.

Taken together, these results — along with the earlier graphs — paint a consistent picture: younger Latter-day Saints are more moderate than older ones, but they’re not “liberal.” Only about a third favor unrestricted abortion access, and on most social issues, their views track closely with those of Mormons in their sixties and seventies.

This is a point I feel like I make all the time: less conservative does not mean more liberal. Younger LDS voters supported Trump in 2024, they hold fairly right-leaning views on social policy, and they perceive the Democratic Party as drifting further left.

In other words, I wouldn’t expect Utah to turn purple anytime soon.

Code for this post can be found here.

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Ryan P. Burge is a professor of practice at the Danforth Center on Religion and Politics at Washington University.