What about the Mormon vote?

[JA]

An interesting question just occurred to me as I was reading an article arguing that the far-right vote is motivated more by White identity politics than economic issues or class interests. What about the Mormon vote? Mormons are a largely non-Hispanic White demographic that voted 80% for Bush in 2004, 78% for Romney in 2012, and 61% for Trump in 2016. In Utah, Trump held only 45% of the vote, in contrast with Romney and even McCain's routing of Obama in the state.

While Trump held a strong majority of Mormon voters nationwide, he nevertheless plummeted among this group in comparison to previous Republican candidates. Utah had the strongest trend of all states in the nation, more than twice the number two state, at 31.76% Democratic trend. Nearly every county in the state of Utah trended Democratic...



So, what explains the Mormon vote? It would be understandable why African Americans, Hispanics, and Asians (Mormon and non-Mormon ones, of course) would not shift towards Trump even if the root cause was economic anxiety. Those groups are not inclined to vote for the GOP, not to mention they were frequently exploited for Trump's political gain. But why would a demographic that was not targeted by Trump, has consistently voted extremely Republican, and has not, as a group, benefited from globalization in any particularly unique way, swing so hard against him? Are they simply an exception to the rule? Or was the issue for them also identity politics and, driven by that, record numbers defected from Trump and his far-right message?

[JA]

Family values (social issues). Also, Mormons are far less favorable to tough immigration stances and far more favorable to economic conservatism than typical Republicans East of the Mississippi. Trump wasn't much of an advocate of economic conservatism and family values, but was a big advocate of immigration restrictions. Not the way to please Mormons. Huckabee did terribly in Utah in 08, too.

BTW Blacks did shift toward Trump. Hispanics and Asians are hard to generalize about.

Oh, I know. I meant it would be understandable why they would not, I did not mean that they did not. Poor wording on my part.

While everything you said seems true, my question was really the Mormon vote in the broader context of whether Trump's vote (and the far-right more generally) was driven by economic or identity issues. If it was economic, then why did Mormons buck that trend so significantly? Or is the Mormon vote a good indicator that it wasn't economic, but rather identity (and not just for Mormons, but for Americans overall)?

[JA]

Egg McMuffin

But there wouldn't have been a mass defection to him among Mormons if they were not deeply alienated from Trump and his campaign.