Running Head: PRESIDENTIAL RELIGIOSITY. Presidential Religiosity: Mitt Romney s Mormon faith and his political favorability

Transcription

1 1 Running Head: PRESIDENTIAL RELIGIOSITY : Mitt Romney s Mormon faith and his political favorability Spencer Brignac, Thomas Oubre, Lauren Smith, Ambria Washington Louisiana State University

2 2 Abstract We performed two studies that examined the effects of knowing Romney is Mormon on his political favorability as a presidential candidate. Study 1 was inconclusive because it was a non-probability convenience sample. However, we gauged respondents one word reactions to Mormonism and Mitt Romney enabling us to create word clouds illustrating different reactions. In study 2, we also used NAES data, which was probability sampling. This data allowed us to draw statistically significant conclusions about respondents opinions of Mitt Romney and his Mormon faith. When we controlled all of the variables, we found that a more conservative person liked Mitt Romney more because he was a Mormon. Those conservatives who did not know Romney is a Mormon liked him less. The opposite was true among liberals. Romney experienced lower favorability if they knew he was a Mormon. The effects of Romney s Mormonism on different groups are discussed.

3 : Mitt Romney s Mormon faith and his political favorability 3 Introduction Religion has seemingly always been a major issue in deciding American presidential elections. Candidates must appeal to major religious constituencies in order to win the presidency, and Americans tend to form salient opinions of candidates based on their religion. Although Mormonism is for the most part considered a Christian denomination, many Americans view it in a negative light and often mock Mormon doctrine publicly. Former presidential candidate Mitt Romney is an active member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, and the Romney family is considered one of the most important groups in the church. Not only did Romney serve as a bishop for the Mormon Church, but he also donated tens of millions of dollars to it, including $4.3 million in 2010 and 2011 alone (Goodale, 2012). Unfortunately for him, only 1.9% of Americans share his beliefs, and because Mormons are largely isolated in the Western United States, the vast majority of Americans does not know a Mormon and thus view them as an outside group. The negative perception of Mormons is rooted in the Church of Latter Day Saints controversial history, which unlike other Christian denominations, occurred largely in the 20 th century. In the late 20 th century, the Mormon Church faced criticism for overlapping controversial religious and political issues, prominently against feminist positions, including stances that are considered anti-abortion, anti-gay marriage, anti-union, anti-capital punishment, and pro-school prayer (Mauss, 1984). Polygamy and Mormonism have been linked since the mid-1800s when Brigham Young moved the church s base to Utah, where he spread the doctrine of multiple spouses (Dougherty, 2009). The news media has reinforced the Mormon association

4 4 with polygamy through recent news stories that uncovered modern-day Mormon, polygamist compounds where very young girls were forced to have sex with grown men. Many popular comedy shows on television, such as South Park, Family Guy and others, have openly mocked Mormons regarding polygamy, teachings from the Book of Mormon, and the church s founding. All of these factors help contribute to the general disdain of Mormons. There is not much Romney can do to distance himself from this aspect of Mormonism, even though he has a wife a 42 years and has publicly stated, I can t imagine anything more awful than polygamy (Sanchez, 2012). Outside of polygamy, there have been similar tactics to associate the oddities of the religion with Romney, such as the so-called magical underwear that he wears regularly (Mormons call this common apparel temporal undergarments ). Others have poked fun at the Mormon doctrine that prohibits drinking alcohol, tea, coffee, swearing and smoking cigarettes. Another major issue is that Mormons did not allow blacks to enter their church until 1978, but Romney did not expect to win much black vote at all based on the 2008 election (John, 2011). Overall public opinion of Mormonism in the United States is both polarized and salient in the minds of the American people because of Mitt Romney s candidacy for president, which compelled us to research potential implications these attitudes may have on vote choice in the 2012 election. Literature Review While some in the media have questioned President Obama s religious dedication, the bottom line is that he is a traditional Christian along with over 75% of the population. A candidate s religious affiliation alone does not predict political behavior of voters; religious commitment and spiritual belief also factor into voting behavior (Olson, 2008). Past candidates have shown that discussing religion can be dangerous, such as Howard Dean, who dropped

5 5 substantially in favorability polls after publicly discussing his faith, or lack thereof, in 2004 (Silk, 2007). When it comes down to the election, Mormonism hurts Romney most in the favorability category, which is crucial to any presidential campaign. Romney s faith likely hurt his support from Independent and undecided voters the most. These voters are more inclined to vote based on character traits because they tend to be less ideological and substantially uninformed about the intricacies of policy. They may feasibly be swayed towards Obama if they believe Romney is a cult follower, or something of the sort (Meacham, 2011). Traditionally, Republicans are known as the religious candidates that capture the passion of their conservative base by appealing to traditional religious values; examples include Dwight Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan, and George W. Bush. While this may be public perception, research has shown that high religious commitment does not necessarily indicate high approval ratings, but the manner of interpreting religious doctrine has a strong effect. Those who interpret their faith in a concrete, shrewd way (like evangelicals) tend to approve of Republican presidents at significantly higher rates than Democrats (Olson, 2008). The religion gap has become one of the most divisive aspects of American politics and often decides elections (Olson, 2008). In a one Gallup Poll that spans from 1967 to 2012, Americans answered a question about their willingness to support a Mormon candidate for president that asks, If your party nominated a generally well-qualified person for president who happened to be Mormon, would you vote for that person? While the vast majority of Americans said yes, they would vote for a Mormon, 22% said they would not. In the context of a presidential election, 22% is huge. Although the numbers are slightly lower for Republicans and Independents (20%) than for Democrats (27%), it still represents one fifth of both the Republican and independent vote. Not surprisingly, the largest margin in opposition to voting for a Mormon candidate lies in education

6 6 levels, with those lacking college education being most resistant. Specifically, 31% of those polled without any college experience would vote for a Mormon, while 20% of those with some college would not, and only 12% of college graduates (Saad, 2011). This may show a bias among uneducated Americans to vote more based on candidate traits rather than more concrete factors, such as issue positions or a prior record. Besides education, there are no other significant demographic differences reflected in the responses. Gender, age, region of the country, religious preference, and church attendance did not have any strong effects on this question, only education, which seems to reveal a widespread consensus among Americans that there is something not right about the Church of Latter Day Saints or actual Mormons themselves, even though they generally worship the same figures. What is most troubling for Romney about this poll is that responses have remained highly stable over the 44-year period in which the question was asked. In 1967, 75% of people said they would vote for a Mormon, and in 2011, 76% of people similarly said they would. Americans have not held a 22% voting bias for other historically discriminated groups in decades, including Catholics (1959), Jews (1961), blacks (1971), and women (1975) (Saad, 2011). Americans are more accepting now than they were in the 1960s, which is demonstrated by the religious affiliation of a few House members that are Buddhist and Muslim, but according to the previously discussed polls, they have yet to come around to Mormonism (Gibbs, 2007). To put this into context, the only particular groups that polled worse than Mormons for this question were Atheists (49% opposition) and Gays (32% opposition). There are several groups that, somewhat surprisingly, polled much better than Mormons, including Hispanics (10% opposition), Jews (9% opposition), and blacks (5% opposition). It is very curious that Jews, who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as their savior, have less than half the opposition that Mormons

7 7 do, and because the bias towards Mormons is higher than that of historically discriminated racial groups proves that Americans are not becoming much more accepting of the Mormon faith (John, 2011). These large discrepancies led us to form our research question: What effect does Mitt Romney s Mormon faith have on his overall favorability rating leading up to the 2012 presidential election? -Graphs from Gallup.com (Saad, 2011)

8 8 Study 1-- Online survey of presidential religiosity Method By using a quantitative method of research, we conducted an online survey questioning respondents attitudes toward Republican candidate Mitt Romney s religion. The survey was conducted through Qualtrics consisting of 20 questions with a convenience sample of 30 participants. We posted the surveys as a link through social media sites including Facebook and Twitter from October 27 to November 1. Thirty responses were collected after the following date. This period also represented the time around the 2012 presidential election between President Barack Obama and Gov. Mitt Romney. Respondents were asked questions pertaining to their own religious faith as well as Republican candidate Mitt Romney s Mormon faith. Participants were first asked to give a oneword response to the word Mormon. We categorized the one-word responses given by participants as negative, positive or neutral response toward their views on the Mormon religion. Participants were then asked a series of questions regarding their knowledge about the Mormon religion. Participants were questioned to see if they viewed the Mormon religion in a positive or negative way, and if they believed the United States was ready for a Mormon president. Participants were also asked to give another one word response regarding what they thought about Mitt Romney. Those responses were also put into the same categories. Results Since we took a convenience sample, we were unable to find a significant correlation between variables. We found no significant differences in Romney likeability between male and female respondents. However, we did find that more females (70.0%) than males (53.3%) said

9 9 they disliked Romney. Given a large sample size, we feel this trend would continue and likely reach significance. Views on Mormonism nega,ve posi,ve neutral 57% 36% 7% We were able to find a correlation between the one-word responses regarding respondents views on Mormonism and their views on Mitt Romney. As illustrated above, 57 percent of respondents gave a neutral response when asked to give the first word that comes to mind when you hear the word Mormon. However in the illustration below, 49 percent of respondents gave a negative response toward Mitt Romney. People were more likely to give negative responses to Romney but had neutral responses toward the Mormon religion. Views on Romney nega,ve posi,ve neutral 19% 32% 49% We compared our data to a survey in NAES to view a more random sample similar to our survey.

10 10 Study 2 Survey of American public National Annenberg Election Survey (NAES) Method Our second study relies on data from 2008 National Annenberg Election Study s (NAES) telephone rolling cross-sectional survey, which began on December 17, 2007 and concluded on November 3, During this time, 57,967 adults in the United States were interviewed by telephone. Standard random digit dialing was employed. The independent variable used is political ideology, the dependent variable is Romney s favorability, and the mediating variable is whether respondents knew he was Mormon or not. For a full methodology see Results The sample contained 57.2 percent female respondents and 42.8 percent male respondents. Only 4.8 percent of respondents knew that Mitt Romney was a Mormon. Table 1 Ordinary least squares regression predicting Romney favorability (N=7,386) B SE t Female Age *** Black Hispanic Education Income *** Church Attendance Freq Protestant Church Affiliation Political Ideology *** Political Knowledge Know Romney is ***

11 11 Mormon (1=yes) Ideology X Know Romney is Mormon *** R % First, we interpreted demographic results from our ordinary least squares regression analysis. Of interest is respondent age. As shown in Table 1, with each year increase in respondent age, there is a corresponding increase (B= se =0.002, p<.01) in Romney favorability, controlling for all other variables in the model. In terms of respondent income, with every one unit increase in income, respondents said they favored Romney more (B=0.003, se =0.001, p<.01), controlling for other variables. Next we interpreted variables crucial to our research question. We were interested to know the effect of political ideology on Romney favorability. Moreover, we wanted to know if liberals and conservatives liked Romney more or less if they knew he was a Mormon. First we analyze the direct effect of political ideology on Romney favorability. As shown in Table 1, going from liberal to conservative relates to an increase in Romney favorability (B =0.570, se = 0.027, p<.01), controlling for all other variables. In terms of direct effects of knowing Romney is the Mormon candidate, those respondents who could identify Romney as the Mormon candidate favored Romney more (B = 0.283, se = 0.058, p<.01). Interacting these variables, we find a positive effect of knowing Romney is the Mormon candidate on the relationship between respondent s political ideology and Romney favorability (B=0.036, se= 0.012, p<.01).

12 12 We included an interaction term in our ordinary least squares (OLS) regression analysis, examining the multiplicative effect of knowing whether Romney was the Mormon candidate on the relationship between political ideology and Romney favorability. Liberal respondents who could identify Romney as the Mormon candidate had lower mean favorability ratings of Romney than liberals who could not identify Romney as the Mormon candidate. Among conservative respondents, those who knew Romney was Mormon had higher favorability ratings than conservatives who did not know Romney was Mormon. Overall, conservatives had higher favorability ratings of Romney than did liberals.

13 13 Figure 1 Interaction between R ideology and knowledge of Romney s Mormon faith )" (" 5'2"1'6$#$7-("8(9":/+-(.;(<(="/>7(5'2"1?(@;<5'2"14( '" &" %" $" #"!"!" #" $" %" &" *+",-./01"23"4-5.-/" +/-6",-./01"23"4-5.-/"!"#$%&'#()*+"#",-(.&"/0+12'%2+(&"*+*(3$,34( Discussion The results of Study 1 were ultimately inconclusive and portrayed no significant relation between Mitt Romney s religious beliefs and his political likability (H1). We believe we found no relation between the two mainly because the study conducted was a convenience sample survey consisting of only 30 participants. Furthermore, we are under the assumption that most of the survey participants are around the same age (20-25), likely have around the same levels of education and income and live in the same geographic region. This led us to believe that their political ideologies and opinions of Romney and Mormonism are likely to be similar. If we had

14 14 conducted a stratified random sample with more participants, we predict that our results would have varied much more than they did. The results of the study conducted through the NAES database were more conclusive. This study used the random digit dialing method to survey 57,967 adults across the United States, all of different ages, levels of income and education and throughout different geographic regions. The results concluded that overall, conservatives had higher favorability ratings of Romney than did liberals. Amongst these conservative respondents, those who knew Romney was Mormon had higher favorability ratings than conservatives who did not know Romney was Mormon. We believe this relation was found based mainly upon the various levels of education of the participants surveyed. We concluded that the more participants knew and understood about Romney and Mormonism, and the more religiously conservative they were, the more likely they were to view his religious beliefs as a positive characteristic. Neither study fully explains the relation between Mitt Romney s Mormon beliefs and his likability as a political candidate, however, both provide insight to the possibility that a candidate s religious preference matters more during a campaign than its recognized for.

15 15 References Dougherty, M (2009, February 23). Mormons at the Door. from The American Conservative Web Site: Gibbs, N. (2007, May 10). Romney s Mormon Question, Time Magazine 169(21), Goodale, G (2012, January 25). Mitt Romney's tithing: Do voters see it as very generous or very Mormon?. from The Christian Science Monitor Web Site: Do-voters-see-it-as-very-generous-or-very-Mormon John, J. (2011). The Site Of Mormon Political Theology. Perspectives On Political Science, 40(2), Mauss, A. L. (1984). Sociological perspectives on the Mormon subculture. Annual Review of Sociology, Meacham, J (2011, October 4). An Unholy War. from Time Magazine Web Site: Olson, L. R., & Warber, A. L. (2008). Belonging, Behaving, and Believing Assessing the Role of Religion on Presidential Approval. Political Research Quarterly, 61(2), Saad, L. (2011, June 20). In U.S., 22% Are Hesitant to Support a Mormon in Gallup.Com. Retrieved November 26, 2012, from Sanchez, R (2012, April 23). US election 2012: Mitt Romney's Mormonism thrust back into spotlight. from The Telegraph Web Site: Silk, M. (2007). Defining religious pluralism in America: A regional analysis. The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science,612(1),