Fair to Compare Mormons for Romney to Blacks for Obama?
Just a quick note…
In this weekend’s Nevada caucus, the first primary contest with a large percent of Mormon voters (26% of participants), Mitt Romney won handily by 50 percent of the total. But he strikingly won 90 percent of the Mormon vote.
During the presidential campaign of Barack Obama, African-Americans were criticized for blindly following Obama because of race. Similar charges are not being leveled, at least not to the same extent, against Mormon voters for Romney.
Humans are social animals and we all have reasons for hewing to identity and affinity groups, as well as calculations about whether and how supporting a particular candidate will affect us and our communities.
There is no question that anti-Mormon bias is going to be a factor among some Republican voters when it comes to Romney. But I’m also interested in whether and how the close hewing of Mormon voters to Romney as a candidate will be explored with the same persistence than the black vote for Obama did.
Just ran across your blog. I’m LDS (Mormon) and I agree your contention that this is a social issue. Whether one identifies with a candidate thru religion, ethnicity or region (ie., being from Chicago,) is indeed affinity based. I see nothing wrong with it. I certainly don’t see it as racist….for heaven sake. 73% of the African American population were registered as Democrats in 2008. Of COURSE they are going to vote for Obama who is, after all, a Democrat. Doesn’t offend me at all. Can’t imagine why it would.