Who are the Mormon Trumpers and Anti-Trumpers?
Let's look at Mormon demographics that have moved toward and away from Trump
Today’s post is all about Trump and Trump Mormons. Next week, I plan to write about civic engagement and Mormons. And, after that, I plan to write another politically related post, so stay tuned!
Introduction
Well, it’s that time of year again. In about three weeks, the US will go to the polls to elect the next president of the United States. So, its the perfect time to share a few political posts leading up to the election.
Much ink has been spilled over Donald Trump’s Mormon problem. I won’t post links here, but just google it. You will find a plethora or articles dating back to 2016 talking about Trump’s morals, divorces, and demeanor and how Mormons don’t like it. I am not interested in talking about why Mormons don’t like Trump, today’s piece focuses on which Mormons don’t like Trump. So, let’s dive in.
Charts
For this analysis, I wanted to compare the most recent election year prior to Trump (Romney 2012) vs. the most recent Trump election (2020). I considered comparing 2016 data, but because of a large third-party draw from Evan McMullin, it is more straight forward to compare movement from 2012 to 2020.
There are a few different ways to look at this question. I could compare party identification over time which has shifted for Mormons, but in this post I want specifically to look at vote choice. Many Mormons may vote for a different candidate during Trump’s era, yet still identify Republican. So, to me, vote choice gets right at the heart of the Trump question. If Mormons don’t like Trump, fewer of them should vote for him!
First, let’s look at how Mormons moved from 2012 to 2020
From our chart, we can see a 12 percentage point drop from 2012 to 2020. Twelve points isn’t really a terribly large movement, but Mormons have also been one of the most republican identifying groups in recent history, so it represents a notable shift.
At baseline, Mormons are moving away from Trump. Now, let’s look at the demographic groups that have moved the most from Trump.
Let’s interpret these numbers. Taking the first group, Mormons Age 18-30… in 2012 this group voted for Romney net 30 points higher than for Trump. 78% of age 18-30 Mormons voted for Romney then for Trump in 2020 only 48% did (48-78=-30 points). This is a large gap! Young mormons really dislike Trump! Note that Mormons age 31-45 aren’t far behind moving 24 points away from Trump instead of 30.
Another thing I’ll point out, many Mormons with young families don’t like Trump. Notice the 20 point movement away from Trump among those with a child under 18. Also, those who say their employment is “homemaker” moved 19 points away from Trump. So, there may be a gender component here (more on this later!)
Now let’s look at Mormons who didn’t move much from Romney to Trump or may have even moved toward Trump from Romney.
First, note while there are groups that move toward Trump, the movement isn’t very large (max of 4 points).
One thing that stuck out to me here is the age component again. Mormons Age 60+ actually moved toward Trump by 3 points! In this group, we have older, divorced, military-adjacent and people who attend church less often than weekly. Also, Mormons who say religion is not “very important“ in their life voted for 2020 Trump and Romney at the same rate!
One of my biggest findings was that Mormons who attend church weekly or more and view religion as “Very Important“ in their life were less supportive of Trump and moved away from him. In the rest of the US population, those with higher religiosity on average were more supportive of Trump.
I was curious about the Age X Gender interaction, so I created this simple crosstab chart below
As you can see, Mormon females 18-30 are especially resistant to Trump moving 37 points away from him! Also, males age 60+ were more likely to vote for him than Romney by 9 points. To me, Mormon movement from Trump is mostly a function of age, but I think gender plays a role as well. Just look at the difference between Mormons under 45 vs. Mormons over 45. Mormons over 45 didn’t move much from Romney to Trump, but those under moved away from him by margins of 20 to 40 points!
One last chart I’ll show is the interactions between having a child under 18 and gender.
The greatest movement we see is for women with young children. This is likely also due to the age component as younger people are more likely to have young children, but just wanted to show that Mormon Moms (and Dads to a lesser extent) are significant movers away from Trump.
Conclusion
So here are my takeaways from the analysis:
Many mormons don’t like Trump; and, while Mormons represent one of the staunchest Republican groups in the country, they moved away from 2020 Trump by 12 points compared with Romney.
Young Mormons were the largest movers away from Trump. The greatest movements were from young mormon females. Many young mormon families (especially homemakers) moved away from Trump.
Mormons indicating higher religiosity were higher movers away from Trump. The US saw the opposite movement with more higher religiosity Americans voting for Trump than Romney.