The United States has just experienced a deadly campaign. Donald Trump won the Electoral College count by a comfortable margin and even won the popular vote.

Early exit polls showed members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints were again mostly loyal to Trump, although his support among that religious population may have declined since 2020.

So what happened? What does the election say about the partisan divide among Latter-day Saints? And what could a second Trump administration mean for the global Church and its members?

McKay Coppinsaward-winning Latter-day Saint journalist who has covered national politics since The Atlantic and wrote a biography of the Utah senator. Mitt Romneyhelps answer these questions and more.

Here are excerpts from this wide-ranging conversation on the Salt Lake Tribune’s latest news story. Podcast “Mormon Land”.

At this point, what do we know about how Latter-day Saints voted?

The first exit polls can tell us a certain amount, but they are not perfect, far from it. …Fox News, for example, released an exit poll that showed 63 percent of Latter-day Saint voters supported Trump. That same poll, in 2020, indicated that about 72% supported Trump. Cooperative Election Study data shows Latter-day Saint voting is lower than in 2020. But if you compare apples to apples, it appears Latter-day Saint support for Trump has declined or remained stable. This is only remarkable in that, looking at the entire (political) landscape, Trump has improved – and, in many cases, dramatically – in most demographic groups. … This suggests that Trump may have reached his ceiling (among Latter-day Saints) in 2020, (which is) 15 to 20 percent lower than traditional Republican candidates.

Just after the election, you wrote about how Trump’s crude rhetoric “debased political discussions and desensitized voters to behavior that in another era they would have considered disqualifying a president.” Have the Latter-day Saints who voted for him also become desensitized? How do they justify voting for a candidate who speaks like this?

People I know who voted for Trump would have been absolutely outraged by the things he said, even in the final weeks of this campaign. Just look at the last six weeks of the 2024 election cycle. He spread lies that Haitian immigrants were eating their neighbors’ pets. He said America was the trash can of the world. He invited a comedian on stage to call Puerto Rico a floating island of garbage. This goes on and on. Ten years ago, if Trump supporters had seen a Republican candidate make such a speech on the presidential stage, they would have said, “There’s no way this person is in the White House.” Not only did these people vote for him, but for the most part, it didn’t bother them at all. …People voting for Trump for the second or third time have, at this point, long ago created a permission structure to support someone whose character and behavior falls well short of the standards they would have set for presidential candidates in the past. I also asked Mitt Romney about this justification: “When I hire a plumber, I don’t ask to see his plumber. temple recommend. I just want to know if it will do the job. …When I asked Romney about the plumber’s defense, he became very agitated and said, “Well, does it matter to you if the plumber yells at your kids?” Do you worry if he scams you? Do you mind if he screams out of your driveway? Romney’s point was that character matters in all facets of life. And certainly, when it comes to a President of the United States, there’s no denying that his character ripples through the rest of the country, right? Many people consider the country’s leader as an example. And when he’s as crude, vulgar, abusive and cruel as Trump, it can’t help but have an effect on the behavior of others. (Political discourse) wasn’t great 10 years ago, but it’s undeniably much worse today. In reality, no one is blameless, but Donald Trump is the kind of singular figure in modern history when it comes to lowering our expectations of presidential behavior.

Last year, the First Presidency that governs the Church warned against heterosexual votingsending a signal that American members can and perhaps should consider voting for candidates other than the Republicans. Did this have an impact?

This message is really interesting and quite at odds with the way, frankly, most voters vote, and certainly with the traditional way most Latter-day Saints have voted. I would like to see more messages from the Church. It will actually be in the best interests of the Church, at least in America, to have a more politically open-minded and diverse membership in the future. The fact that MPs voted for Republicans made them less influential as voters, because (the party) might take those voters for granted. Political partisanship is not a good way to approach complex and important civic issues.

How do you think the Church might respond to Trump’s promised mass expulsions, given his public statement policies favorable to immigrants?

If you’re looking for tension between the Church and the Trump administration, a mass expulsion program is one that could generate some resistance, certainly from Church members, but also even at the institutional level of the Church. part of the Church. … If he follows through, I imagine there will be strong pushback from religious communities, including Latter-day Saints. … This would be one of those issues that would transcend partisanship and provoke serious backlash.

The Church never asks its members about their immigration status, and many Latinos in Utah are undocumented, yet fully active in the Church. From a pragmatic point of view, wouldn’t this push the Church to oppose mass deportations?

Mass deportations could wipe out families who make up the backbone of various branches and wards across the country, and trigger backlash from members of their wards and stakes. I served a (church) mission in Dallas, Texas, in Spanish. And I know from direct experience that many of these members are really important to the functioning of these congregations. They provide a lot of services and many of them are undocumented. The Church has made it clear that it wants a humane immigration control policy that prioritizes keeping families together.

Some evangelical Christians see Trump as a kind of Christian “savior” and that God wanted him to be president. Why don’t Latter-day Saints speak like this?

In fact, I wrote a story for The Atlantic earlier this year about prayers that were offered at the start of the Trump rallies, most given by evangelicals. One of the recurring themes of these prayers is the idea that Trump was anointed by God to lead this country, that he is some sort of biblical figure, set apart to save the country from ruin. Many of these same supporters have simply bought into the idea that Trump is a pious, almost prophetic figure, like Paul or other types of downright heroic figures from the Bible. I haven’t seen this much, even among ardent Latter-day Saint supporters. They will say he is doing great things for the country. And a lot of them were leaning toward the idea that God saved him from assassination attempts, but I haven’t heard that he was a special figure anointed by God. Given the way the Church is organized in this hierarchical way, there isn’t as much room for some sort of non-Latter-day Saint politician to be brought into that hierarchy… Latter-day Saints would feel bad comfortable comparing it. to a prophet, given their own beliefs about prophets.

To listen to the podcast, go to sltrib.com/podcasts/mormonland. To receive the full transcripts of “Mormon Land,” as well as our full newsletter and access to all of Tribune’s religion content, support us at Patreon.com/mormonland.

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