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To: CharlesWayneCT
Anyway, this has gone far astray of my point, which was to question the claim that Harry Reid recieved a majority of the Mormon vote.

Let's go from this specific case, to the general:

Do you think that a generic MORMON candidate, regardless of party or politics, would recieve a majority of the Mormon vote compared to a non-MORMON?

654 posted on 07/20/2011 5:00:41 AM PDT by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going)
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To: Elsie

No, I don’t think I would bet on that. I certainly think that, all other things being equal, Mormons will vote for a Mormon over a non-Mormon. I would also believe that they would do so at a higher rate than mainstream religions, and would suggest that might be because they have a more cohesive bond within their faith, although that would be speculation. This effect would be much like the Catholic effect from the a few decades ago, where for example we hadn’t had a Catholic President, and a lot of Catholics who would otherwise vote republican ended up voting for Kennedy because they felt it was “time” for a Catholic.

Beyond that, I would want to see the actual data for specific elections, which would give me a sound basis for making predictions. I’d guess that mormons would vote for a less-conservative Mormon over a more-conservative non-Mormon. They might have a real problem with fundamentalist Christian politicians, especially if they are from denominations which more vocally denounce the Mormon faith.

My statement really was about a specific race — the evidence I’ve seen was counter to the claim, so I questioned the claim, and I’ve seen little to show that the claim was correct.

Here is my last speculation on that subject; I think in a national race, the propensity of Mormons to vote for a Mormon candidate I believe would be nullified by the propensity of evangelical and fundamentalist Christians to tend to NOT vote for a Mormon. So it might help a candidate in states with larger Mormon populations, but hurt them in states with strong Christian voting blocks. I think we saw that to some degree in the 2008 election, and Huckabee definitely tried to play on that possibility.


673 posted on 07/20/2011 1:55:36 PM PDT by CharlesWayneCT
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