Don’t ask me, ask Gallup:
The May 25-30 [2011] survey from the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press asked people how they would vote for presidential candidates with different traits.
Overall, 25 percent of voters would be less likely to vote for a Mormon. Liberal Democrats were most opposed to a Mormon candidate (41 percent).
There you have it, lady and gents, despite some gentlepersons of the left trying to make great hay of GOP opposition to Mitt Romney’s “Mormon” candidacy like this:
https://ordinary-times.com/eliasisquith/2011/10/08/reminder-mitt-romney-is-a-mormon/
Nice title.
Yeah, there is some opposition in the primary, but even evangelicals only came in at 34%, and those like Cincinnati Reds pitcher cum preacher Frank Pastore will still go for Romney over the Democrat if he’s the GOP nominee.
The breakdown from Gallup, prejudiced against Mormon candidates:
Republicans: 18%
Independents: 19%
Democrats: 27%
It is to laugh. Hail to the Chief. As our good friend Mr. Schilling aptly quoted the estimable South Park:
“Maybe us Mormons do believe in crazy stories that make absolutely no sense, and maybe Joseph Smith did make it all up. But I have a great life and a great family, and I have the Book of Mormon to thank for that. The truth is, I don’t care if Joseph Smith made it all up, because what the Church teaches now is loving your family, being nice and helping people. And even though people in this town might think that’s stupid, I still choose to believe in it. All I ever did was try to be your friend, Stan, but you’re so high and mighty you couldn’t look past my religion and just be my friend back. You’ve got a lot of growing up to do, buddy. Suck my balls.”
I’d pay good money to hear President Romney tell his detractors to suck his balls as he’s inaugurated in 2013. But I’ll smile instead, and hear him say what he leaves unsaid.
Maybe someday we will even have a Democratic Senate Majority leader who is Mormon.
Don’t aim so low.
Harry Reid is a pretty high ranking guy…whats wrong with that.
I’m betting Prez Romney won’t have to show his birth certificate or be declared a traitor or told he really isn’t american.
Mr. Gregniak, you can do better than rehashing birtherism. Pls do.
Counte not thy Chickens that vnhatched be,
Waye wordes as winde, till thou finde certaintee.
Just having a little fun, JB. But I’ll betcha.
The interesting part is the liberal Democrat response. I thought at least they’d have the decency to lie to the pollster.
😉
Maybe when you say Mormon they think Glenn Beck. Or they think of Prop 8 in California and out of state involvement. Who knows.
(That isn’t to say the blanket condemnation makes sense. If a liberal Democrat runs for office who happens to be a Mormon, liberal Democrats should probably go ahead and vote for them.)
Many have attempted to answer some of this speculating that when they ask liberal democrats about Mormons, these liberal democrats are thinking of Mitt Romney, not Harry Reid, or they simply think “right wing religious nutjob”.
Despite the fact that Jon Huntsman may be the most reasonable candidate of them all.
Huntsman seems reasonable. If I lived in Utah, I’d be happy to have him representing me. (unlike MOST PA politicians, I might add.)
So far, he and Olene Walker have been the best. She wasn’t given a chance to run again after Leavitt was promoted to the Bush administration, because, well…she’s not a reactionary and she has the wrong chromosomes for many of our power brokers.
The word “liberal” does not appear in either the Pew or Gallup pages you link.
“Counte not thy Chickens that vnhatched be,
Waye wordes as winde, till thou finde certaintee.”
I’m counting the chickens on this one. As a back of the envelope guess, I’d venture Mr. Obama has a 50% chance of beating Cain, Bachmann, or Perry, and a 10% chance of beating Romney.
Not that I’m inclined to be any sort of determinist, but Mr. Obama won’t be in middle of the big moves in our cultural/economic/political space over the next 2-3 years.
This couldn’t possibly be because Mormons have also acquired a reputation as being both socially and politically conservative, could it? I mean, maybe a very minor factor at most, right?
It’s funny, I actually work with Mormons, who happen to be some the most awesomest people I know. However, I was talking to one guy yesterday and he was speaking of how taken aback he was by all the protesters that came out after the Prop 8 deal.
I asked him how he would feel if the Southern Baptists decided one day that they thought by allowing Mormons to call themselves Christians it really delegitamized the whole concept of Christianity and that Mormons ought not be able to have that luxury. Sure they could go to their houses of worship and do all the things they were doing anyway, but they couldn’t call themselves Christian or enjoy the tax exempt status of other religions.
I’m sure he and I still have a chasm of thought on the issue, but he did seem to understand how one group telling another group about the liberties they may or may not enjoy and funding the effort to restrict that group might lead to some hostility among the group being lobbied against.
So prejudices are OK if they’re well-founded, Burt?
I’m not making too much of polls like this. But I would think this comes as news to some people because it’s not the sort of thing the mainstream media trumpets, as the color of the flag is wrong.
More interesting had been if they asked whether these same folks would vote for a mormon democrat or a republican evangelical. I think you’re poll reads much differently then, because of the color of the flags.
Tom, please. You know precisely what I’m getting at here. Pollster says “Mormon” and Only-Partially-Informed liberal* respondent hears “conservative,” and says “No, I would not vote for someone like that.”
Yes, this can be explained away, Burt, definitely. But you or I don’t really know what’s in people’s heads, do we? There are a lot of people prejudiced against those with strong religious beliefs and they tend to vote for a certain party. I think you’ll allow that. It’s just a question of how many.
I’m not going to play this by substituting “black” for Mormon, but since blacks are in the 90% Dem range, it would be the same dynamic as yours here. But that’s just sophistry, a fun game but a waste of time.
… I’m not prejudiced against people with strong religious beliefs. I like Cohen, and Lewis, and a lot of ’em. I am against (not prejudiced — that implies a fouled up generalization, which I will not agree is true here) to right wing religions.
Indeed, I would readily allow that those who are prejudiced against very religious people tend to vote for one party rather than the other — and that this tendency is not based on a rational and objective analysis of the factual support for their stated reasons for doing so. I would similarly criticize the Only-Partially-Informed liberal* respondent’s for assuming that because a candidate identifies as Mormon that the candidate is also socially conservative to a degree that the voter would have legitimate casue to reject the candidate out of hand.
In response, there are those who would say that the voter exercises a sacrosanct right to base their decision to vote on whatever criteria they like, no matter how arbitrary, or unreasonable, or even counterfactual. That’s probably right, as a matter of law and even as a normative matter for democracy, but we may still regret it and encourage people to behave differently.
* Really, how “liberal” is such a person?
Ya. Don’t ask me to turn my cheek — that’s someone else’s religion.
I will identify mine enemies, by whatever means they choose to identify themselves. (and yes, this does include the shtetls up in NY State).
Uh oh.
I understand that you’re pointing out here that Democrats are on the “above” side of that curve, contra the mainstream media narrative that prejudice against Romney is motivated by social conservative belief that Mormonism is a weird cult. An interesting fact, indeed. My take on that
But what about those of us who think that it’s not just Mormonism that’s a weird cult, but pretty much all of the Sky Daddy worship? I’d rather face Mitt Romney’s odds than my own:
I doubt Gallup did a partisan breakdown on whether it’s Republicans, Democrats, or Independents who are more reluctant than their counterparts to vote for homosexual or nonbelieving candidates, because there are no overtly homosexual or nonbelieving candidates running. Still, I’m willing to wager that Democrats would be more likely to vote for a homosexual or nonbelieving candidate than Republicans by a statistically significant margin, with Independents (which I’m assuming would better be worded as “Everyone Else” rather than truly nonpartisan voters) somewhere in between.
Regardless of the partisan breakdown, is that prejudice? Or is there a rational basis that one might posit to justify poll respondents’ even stronger hesitancy to vote for a gay candidate or, even moreso, to an atheist candidate?
Burt, the meta was the great hay some try to make of Romney’s “Mormon problem” with GOP voters. According to a new poll, among GOP primary voters, it’s only 13%.
http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/MSNBC/Sections/NEWS/A_Politics/October_Poll.pdf
To the would-be haymakers, I say President Romney, baby. Suck my balls.
(Your disregard of my bait has been noted.)
If Mitt Romney is eventually elected, I would join you in your willingness to offer good money to hear President Romney say exactly those three words in his inaugural address and relishing every moment of the national head-asplodin’ that would follow. Worth every penny — for precisely the reasons articulated in South Park.
49%…
This I assume is because of all those years of being told that people who don’t believe in a supreme being are basically all sociopaths.
Not in a place to look it up, but hasn’t Obama gone on record disavowing the divinity of Christ? If that’s the case, he ought to be in at least as much trouble as Romney on theology.
I wasn’t aware that he had. If that were true, then Obama would be joining Thomas Jefferson, the Abraham Lincoln (applies to pre-election and first term only), and William Howard Taft in making that denial.
My suspicion is that such a denial would be of inconsequential political effect. Despite the unfashionability of dovetailing with the traditional media narrative, I think it’s reliably true that those voters for whom a theological denial of Christ’s divinity would be a problem are, to a statistically significant degree, unlikely to vote for Obama in the first place.
Regardless, this is a primary hurdle, not an incumbent hurdle. For both parties.
I’ve always wanted to see a first term President get divorced, just to see what happens to pundit land.
Yes, I realize this makes me something of a bad person.
Being divorced was an issue for Adlai Stevenson. The first divorced president was, of course, the darling of the family values crowd.
Who was the first president to have had a marriage “annulled”?
Is that a fact or a rumor?
Let’s have both answers.
Presidential Trivia Time!
Divorced: Reagan, of course.
Annulled? There’s apparently a rumor that JFK had an early marriage annulled. No idea if it’s true; if so, it was hushed up quite successfully.
Obama has never divorced any of his wives.
Since BHO attended Trinity Church, Tim, I think he gets a clean bill on this one. He’s definitely on record with a thumbs up on the Resurrection, although so was the unitarian Joseph Priestley.
… which was an evangelical church, do recall. (not an evangelical denomination, of course).
Not sure about Obama, but Lieberman has.
If I didn’t see the Schilling/South Park quote, I’d have to make it up and wouldn’t do nearly as well.
I can’t take any credit: it’s a South Park quote.
Where is my dick?