LOS ANGELES — With one Mormon leading the pack for
the Republican presidential nomination and another scheduled to announce
his candidacy on Tuesday, a significant bloc of American voters
continues to oppose followers of that religion, according to a Gallup
poll released Monday.
About one in five Republicans, or 22 percent, said
they would not vote for a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-day Saints, the official name of the Mormon Church. About the
same proportion of independents said they would oppose a Mormon, while a
larger number of Democrats, about 27 percent, said they were opposed,
according to the poll.
The poll was conducted by telephone from June 9 to
June 12 and includes a random sample of 1,020 adults. The margin of
error is plus or minus 4 percentage points.
Prejudice against Mormons has been a measurable
political factor in American politics since at least the late 1960s,
with a solid group opposing members of that church. That number has
varied, ranging from about 20 percent to as much as 30 percent,
depending on how the polls were worded and carried out.
The finding is especially worrisome to the campaign
of former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, considered to be the leader in
the GOP race with about 20 percent to 25 percent support. Romney in
2008 gave a speech defending his faith in the hope of deflecting fears
about Mormonism.
But the numbers are also a factor for former Utah
Gov. Jon Huntsman, scheduled to formally declare his interest in the
presidential nomination this week. Huntsman already faces a tough road,
even in the fractured GOP field of more than half of a dozen candidates.
But one generation’s prejudice often becomes a
barrier that is surmounted by the next. John F. Kennedy broke through
the anti-Catholic fears to win the presidency. By comparison, in 1959,
the year before Kennedy became the nation’s first Catholic president, 25
percent of Americans — including 22 percent of Democrats, 33 percent of
Republicans and 18 percent of independents — said they would not vote
for a Catholic.
Barack Obama did the same for African-Americans when
he became the first black president. Anti-Mormon bias has remained
steady over the decades, unlike other biases that have decreased. The
last time as many as one in five Americans said they would not vote for
someone from other groups that have felt discrimination was 1959 for
Catholics, 1961 for Jews, 1971 for blacks and 1975 for women. Since
then, opposition was dwindled to single digits.
Romney and Huntsman could even be helped by the
pro-religion feeling generated by some positive media, including the
highly popular and acclaimed Broadway musical “The Book of Mormon.”
Still, prejudice remains a political fact. According
to the Gallup poll, anti-Mormonism cuts across all subgroups. There were
no significant differences based on poll respondents’ gender, age,
region of the country or religious preference. Nor did the degree of
religiosity seem to make a difference. Americans who worshiped at least
weekly were no different in their attitudes from those who worshiped
less frequently or not all.
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