What Type Of Person Doesn't Like Latter-day Saints?
Survey Report on Demographics With Favorable and Unfavorable Views of Latter-day Saints
Introduction
A year or so ago, I came across a fun chart published by Pew Research. Perhaps you have seen this chart around on the web.
It shows favorable vs. unfavorable opinions of different religious groups in the US. The main takeaway is in the title of the chart: “Latter-day Saints feel positively toward other Christian groups in U.S., but the reverse is not true.“ Sure enough, Latter-day Saints have strong positive feelings toward every other group mentioned with the exception of Atheists perhaps, but other religions do not feel the same!
Seeing this chart sparked my curiosity. What about other demographic groups? Which demographic groups outside of religion have favorable opinions vs. unfavorable opinions of Latter-day Saints(Mormons)?
Data
Pew Research releases most of their raw survey data files to the public after they have reported on it. This means that we can dive into the nitty-gritty and the details of the data from the exact report of the chart above! If you are interested in more details on this survey, view here.
Charts
So, before we dive in further to this topic, let’s look at some overall numbers.
By and large, most people (almost 60%) have no opinion or say they “don’t know enough to say.“ So as we proceed, keep in mind that the majority of people don’t have a strong opinion about Mormons.
Do note, however, that there are more people with an unfavorable opinion than a favorable one of Mormons. We will see this trend in later charts.
In the charts below, I look at cuts from several demographic groups (age, gender, race, party, region, education, income, and more) and take the top 10 groups most and least favorable toward Mormons, and the top 10 groups that are least familiar with Mormons.
The chart above is an import piece in all of this because it shows the people who know the least about Mormons. Unsurprisingly, groups that don’t consume news are on this list, but I was surprised to see almost 4 in 10 African - Americans say they don’t know enough about Mormons. I’m honestly not sure what to make of that. My best guess is that the vast majority of Mormons in the US are White and perhaps Mormonism doesn’t escape White circles as much as I previously thought.
Looking first at people who are most favorable, no group is particularly strongly favorable, but generally, folks associated with the Republican party (Older, Male, White) are more favorable towards Mormons with the additions of Catholics and those with high income or education. Also, Westerners have a more favorable opinion compared with other groups.
The first thing that sticks out to me is the magnitude. The most favorable cut in the previous chart was 21%; however, in this one 61% of Atheists have a somewhat or very unfavorable opinion of Latter-day Saints. The magnitudes of unfavorablility are a lot higher!
We see a similar trend with folks that are more likely to be Democrats (Higher education, Atheist, Younger) are more likely to be unfavorable toward Mormons. Atheists, Agnostics, and Non-binary people seem to be especially distasteful toward Mormons. A contributer may be that individuals who leave the church are more likely to be atheist or agnostic (read The Next Mormons book) and people who leave the church are also more likely to have a negative opinion. Also, latter-day saints generally have traditional views on gender which may lead to distaste among gender non-conforming individuals (notice how there are more non-binary respondents who are “very unfavorable“ than “somewhat unfavorable“).
Another thing I noticed was some groups appearing in the Top 10 in both… For example, high income and high education folks appear in both. I attribute this to there being more opinionated high income/education people. These people are essentially less likely to say they don’t know and less likely to have a neutral opinion. This actually spurred me to make the final chart showing the NET number which ignores those who have no opinion or don’t know.
While some groups we’ve seen before, when we account for both favorable AND unfavorable a few groups become more prominent. Also, its clear to see how unfavorable Latter-day Saints are to many people - the most favorable group is only 3 percentage points on the favorable side and most people in the top 10 most favorable are net unfavorable! People with the most favorable views toward Mormons (accounting for unfavorable views) are Hindus, Catholics, Republicans, Age 65+, and those who low news interest. And, on the other side, we can see the religiously unaffiliated, non-binary people, and Democrats have some of the lowest net favorability for Latter-day Saints.
Discussion
Where there any groups that surprised you one way or the other? Is there anything I missed? Or something I should look at in the future?
Great info, Metric! I was surprised that atheists led the pack for unfavorable feelings. I guess I shouldn't be though. I thought a Christian sect would have a higher unfavorable opinion due to actual anti-sermons and traditional negative feelings towards members.(I'm in Oklahoma.)
Vice-versa, I thought atheists wouldn't care very much because there is no higher power in their minds so I assumed they would be more open to people doing whatever they want.