Evan McMullen, a Mormon former CIA agent who is running for president as an independent candidate, announces his candidacy in Salt Lake City in August. Though nearly a complete unknown in national politics, he has an outside shot at winning Utah. (Photo by George Frey/Getty Images)
The central, untested gambit of the Donald Trump campaign has always been that he'd be able to enthuse a critical mass of new Republican voters in Democratic-leaning states to push him over the edge. The flipside, however, is that he'd inevitably alienate some core Republican constituencies, particularly religious conservatives who assign high importance to the personal morality of prospective presidents. For them, Trump—a thrice-married serial philanderer and beauty pageant proprietor who has boasted about ogling, harassing, and even assaulting women—is undoubtedly the least agreeable candidate Republicans have ever nominated.
Polls suggest Trump is over-performing relative to previous GOP nominees in places like rural northern Maine, home to a high concentration of non-religious "downscale" whites. (Recall his famous declaration on the eve of winning the Nevada GOP caucus: "I love the poorly educated!")
Nevada is one state where Trump's theory of the race will be most starkly tested; while an outsized share of his key "less educated whites" demographic reside there, it is also part of the "Mormon corridor," a swath of the Western United States inhabited by members of the the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Mormons really don't like Trump. Adjoining states in the corridor, Arizona and Utah, are traditionally GOP strongholds, but this election cycle they appear tenuous for Trump—if he loses either, he will likely lose the race overall.
So it could end up being that the most pivotal figures of the 2016 election are not the FBI, or "the deplorables," or Trump's groping victims, but the Mormons.
"Trump goes after people in a way that is un-Mormonlike," observed Quin Monson, an associate professor of political science at Utah's Brigham Young University. "He's not nice. He's not nice at all. Mormons—you might not agree with them, but they're nice to have next door."
"They believe that voting for Trump would mean they condone his unsavory past behavior," said Tyler Kay, a Mormon resident of Midvale, Utah, of his co-religionists. As members of a religious minority with a history of being persecuted, pious Mormons perhaps feel a special obligation to depict their group voting behavior in the most virtuous possible light. Trump might be many things, but he's no paragon of virtue, Mormon or otherwise. "The leaders of the Mormon Church are the opposite of him," Kay, who plans to vote for Trump, added, "and we probably have trouble seeing past his behavior to his policies."
Among those Mormons who do support Trump, there seems a to be an overweening social pressure against advertising their allegiance. One "Jack Mormon" woman from Texas—meaning a Mormon who has lapsed devotionally and identifies with the religion mostly out of cultural affinity—wrote to tell me that while she and her husband are strong Trump supporters, her father-in-law, a regular temple-goer and high-ranking LDS official, is a "strong conservative, very Republican, and will vote for Trump, but he's not as outspoken about supporting him as husband and I are." The reason for this is that active Mormons frequently conceive of themselves as in some sense representing the Church, so publicly trumpeting their support for Trump wouldn't be the greatest look.
In Utah especially, a sizable share of voters have apparently taken to independent candidate Evan McMullin, a Mormon and former CIA agent whose purpose in the race seems to be to provide an outlet for conservatives outraged by both Trump and Hillary Clinton to express their discontent. Trump currently leads Utah polls, but only with about one third of the vote; McMullin and Clinton each pull between 20 and 30 percent, and the remainder is either going for Libertarian Gary Johnson or still undecided.
The one saving grace for Trump in Utah—and with many religious voters—is that he's pledged to appoint pro-life justices to the Supreme Court, and for many conservatives, any other flaws he might have are ultimately inconsequential. Trump's explanation for his conversion to an anti-abortion stance—implausible as it might appear to some—mirrors the common narrative of a sinner realizing the error of his ways and getting right with God. Trump may not communicate his own "redemption story" especially movingly, but he nonetheless has one, and some Christian leaders have bought it.
That said, Mormons are more likely than your average Christian conservative to be so repelled by Trump's personal vulgarity that they'll refuse to lend him support no matter what, even if they agree with his stated policy agenda. Throughout the 2016 election cycle, Church elders have issued thinly-veiled condemnations of Trump (who only received 14 percent of the vote at the Utah GOP caucus) as well as encouraging LDS voters to aid Syrian refugees, a group Trump routinely demonizes. And while a minority of Mormons do place a heavy emphasis on abortion, the Church hierarchy does not, unlike various Baptist sects.
"The only reason I think Trump isn't doing well with my demographic is because of his history with infidelity and that his name rings with gambling. I'm serious," said a 29-year-old Mormon Trump voter in Logan, Utah, who requested anonymity because of the social pressures around actively campaigning for Trump (which he is). "Mormons are used to leaders who are chaste until marriage and are solid family values men who can't be described by the word bombastic."
This year has already shown that one of the nation's foremost sinners can win the GOP nomination; Trump amassed his fortune and "brand" via a casino empire, while the LDS Church says all gambling is sinful. We'll learn next week whether the devout will turn out for him anyway. A bevy of " open letters" by "Never Trump" Mormons, as well as the Mormon-owned Deseret News, have explained why Utahns should reject Trump—2012 GOP nominee and former Mormon cleric Mitt Romney, who has denounced Trump but also called Clinton "awful," won't say who he voted for. The question is, will these institutions and "leaders" successfully compel average Mormons to heed their call, or will they be just another edifice Trump tears down on the way to the White House?
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