For decades, Latter-day Saints were such a reliable Republican voting bloc that some of their members—and outsiders—considered The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints virtually synonymous with the Republican Party.
This is slowly – and in some cases dramatically – changing, especially among members of the Millennial and Generation Z faith community.
In the 2020 presidential election, more than 50% of these young Latter-day Saints voted for Democrat Joe Biden, reported sociologist Jacob Rugh of Brigham Young University.
Of all voters of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, one in three cast their vote for Biden, Rugh said. Biden performed better in Utah than any other Democratic presidential candidate since 1964.
Such statistics have energized the small but growing movement of Democrats from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, including those joining the campaign to elect Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz in 2024.
On Tuesday, Rob Taber, national director of the newly formed Harris-Walz Latter-day Saint organization, hosted a virtual meeting of his Democrats, attended by prominent party members from across the country.
About 2,500 people registered, Taber said, and about 1,400 from 49 states participated, including members of all parties and non-party members.
“The level of enthusiasm is unlike anything I’ve ever experienced before,” he said in an interview. “Our best-attended events four years ago (also via Zoom) peaked at about 400 attendees.”
The campaign didn’t bring in much money for the Democratic candidates, Taber said. “It was more about building community and raising morale, although morale was already pretty high.”
“We all moved in”
Like most Latter-day Saint gatherings, the online meeting began and ended with prayers – for the country, for peace and for finding common ground.
During the hour-long meeting, a dozen presentations used familiar Latter-day Saint phrases—“Put your effort in,” “Work hard for a good cause,” and “We all have a responsibility to do this.”
“You can’t be a real Democrat in Utah unless you’re a wild optimist like me,” joked former Congressman Ben McAdams (D-Utah) in his opening remarks.
Much of former President Donald Trump’s campaign was “negative through and through,” McAdams said. “Negativity and division do not come from God.”
America is “on its way to our best days,” he warned the participants of the conference call. “We will add our voices to this movement to heal our divided country and move America forward with liberty and justice for all.”
In the end, McAdams, also a former mayor of Salt Lake County, said: “Optimism will prevail.”
Mayor John Giles of Mesa, Arizona, leads a group there called “Republicans for Harris-Walz.”
Giles, a BYU graduate, reminded the audience of the First Presidency statement a year ago warning members against straight-ticket voting and urging them to be active in elections and examine the character of candidates.
“I sincerely hope that we understand this admonition this election season,” Giles said, “for it would help our brothers and sisters look at this election with fresh eyes.”
The Latter-day Saints love America’s founding charter, said the mayor of Mesa, but Trump is “more than willing to compromise the rule of law and the Constitution of the United States to pursue his own goals.”
Giles lives in an Arizona county with a large percentage of members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints that voted “Democrats” in the 2020 election and that he believes will happen again.
Democratic Rep. Brian King of Utah, who is running for governor, said his faith is consistent with his party.
The party is “progressive in a way that, to me, is beautifully consistent with the plan of salvation and the teachings of our faith,” King said.
“Hopeful and full of energy”
All of the speakers “were full of hope and energy, often speaking of shared values and a commitment to civility and tradition,” said Benjamin Park, a historian of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. “I spoke briefly about the political diversity of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ past and how it was time to amplify and echo the voices of our tradition for solutions that were both compassionate and progressive. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints should embrace diversity and support the marginalized.”
Park, author of “American Zion: A New History of Mormonism,” reminded attendees that Latter-day Saints “were, after all, once the target of Christian nationalism. Supporting the Harris-Walz list would not be a betrayal of our heritage but rather a fulfillment of it.”
Kristine Haglund also referred to the history of the Mormons in her discussion about church and politics.
“In Missouri and Illinois, Latter-day Saints had voted as a bloc, with disastrous results,” said Haglund, former editor of Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought. “In 1891, when the First Presidency (of the Church) considered Utah statehood, it wrote, ‘The more balanced the parties are, the more securely we can preserve our liberties; and our influence for good will be far greater than it ever could be with an overwhelming majority of either party.'”
This is “a wisdom we must relearn as the Church grows and matures,” Haglund said. “The Latter-day Saints’ influence for good is greater when we are known as a politically diverse people, a people whose vision of Zion is bigger than a political platform.”
Changing the narrative
Based on his research, BYU sociologist Rugh believes that regions with high Latter-day Saint populations in western states such as Arizona and Idaho could trigger a trend toward Harris-Waltz.
And in a race with only a small margin between the candidates, he said, those voters could make a big difference.
In the 2020 election in Arizona, for example, Maricopa County “swung from red to blue,” Rugh reported. “My geospatial analysis shows that areas in the East Valley with many LDS chapels were most likely to swing from blue to blue … for Biden-Harris.”
The same is true for Ada County, Idaho, which includes Boise.
“You can count on it in 2024,” he said confidently. “Ada County will then also switch from red to blue.”
Even four districts in Provo, dominated by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, “went Democrat in 2020,” the sociologist said. “January 6 was a turning point for voters of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the 2022 (midterm elections). Voter abstainers paid a high price in Utah, performing about 13 percentage points worse than those who did not abstain from voting.”
This shows that many voters of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who had voted Republican in the past did not support the deniers. This included Utah Senator Mike Lee, who won a third term, albeit by a much narrower margin.
“The people of Utah will not return to their overwhelming support of the Republican Party,” Rugh said.
One of the volunteers for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Joseph Peterson of Frederick, Maryland, said that “the tremendous turnout for the call was a sign both of our ability as a small group of organizers to respond quickly and of the enthusiasm and momentum behind Harris’ campaign.”
It could be “another Mormon moment,” Peterson said, “one in which, more than at any other time in the last 100 years, there will be serious progress in challenging the old and hackneyed rhetoric that stubbornly insists that it is impossible to be a Latter-day Saint and a Democrat.”
That, he said, “was never true.”