Blog 5: Political Identity

            Within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (LDS church) there is a political identity. The church and its beliefs help to shape the political identity of its members.

Most members of the LDS church are members of the Republican Party or lean towards republican views. The fact that someone, in an effort to stand out, puts a bumper sticker on his or her car that says, “I’m voting for Obama and I’m a Mormon” shows that a Republican political identity exists within the church. The causes of LDS church members leaning towards the conservative Republican Party are mainly primordialist.

            Primordialism is defined as “an approach to understanding identity which assumes that identities are something people are born with or that emerge through deep psychological processes in early childhood, given one’s family and community context” (Samuels 153). Growing up in the church, I saw how this political identity rubbed off on me. My own father is a member of the Republican Party and is active in his views. He has voted for the republican presidential candidate in every election that I can remember. His view on politics and when he would talk about politics, affected my view on politics. According to polls done by Gallup from January 2011 to May 2012, about 70 percent of LDS church members identify with or lean towards the Republican Party and only about 19 percent identify with or lean towards the Democratic Party (Jones). This distinction is even bigger in Utah where two-thirds of Utah LDS are Republican while only seven percent are Democrats. Although the church does not take any political stance, the beliefs of the church tend to lean towards the conservative end of the spectrum, and these beliefs pass on from generation to generation. At times the LDS church has been involved in political causes. Examples of this are opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment and support for Proposition 8 in California. These were Republican acts (Gehrke).

            What about the 19 percent of LDS Democrats though? Although there is a distinct political identity of being Republican, not all LDS church members follow that political identity. The absence of this can best be explained using the constructivist argument, which claims that “political identities are malleable, even if they appear to be primordial, and suggests that we think of identity as an evolving process rather than as a fixed set of identity categories” (Samuels 153). These LDS church members have Democratic views, but there still seems to be just a hint of presence of the LDS political identity. LDS democrats have a much higher approval rating of a Governor Romney (the Republican candidate for president) than do other democrats. When looking at Mormon democrats the approval rating for Romney sits at 42 percent, but Romney’s approval rating among other religious democrats is only four percent while it is only six percent among non-religious democrats. This high approval rating among LDS democrats is in part due to the fact that Romney himself is also LDS (Monson).

            Both the primordialist and constructivist arguments help to explain political identity. The primordialist argument may better explain LDS Republicans and the distinct LDS identity, while the constructivist argument may help to explain the LDS democratic political identity.

Works Cited

Gehrke, Robert. "Survey: Mormons Embrace GOP, Shun Democrats." The Salt Lake Tribune. N.p., 14 Dec. 2011. Web. 11 Oct. 2012. <http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/home2/53110048-183/mormons-utah-lds-party.html.csp>.

Jones, Jeffrey M. "Mormons Widely Favor Romney; Jewish Voters Back Obama." Gallup. N.p., 8 June 2012. Web. 11 Oct. 2012. <http://www.gallup.com/poll/155111/mormons-widely-favor-romney-jewish-voters-back-obama.aspx>.

Monson, Quinn. "Do LDS Dems like Mitt Romney." Utah Data Points. N.p., 22 Aug. 2012. Web. 11 Oct. 2012. <http://utahdatapoints.com/2012/08/do-lds-dems-like-mitt-romney/>.

Samuels, David J. Comparative Politics. Boston: Pearson Education, 2013. Print.