The Mormon dilemma: How old and new religious divides hurt Mormon candidates in the United States

• Voter aversion to Mormon candidates is increasing even while it decreases for all other groups.
• Liberals increasingly see Mormon candidates as part of a conservative religious coalition.
• Conservative Christians distrust Mormons and their candidates as not truly Christian.
• Voters' feelings about Mitt Romney are strongly related to their feelings about Mormons.

This paper shows that attitudes towards Mormons are very divisive on two levels: many religious conservatives distrust Mormons and refuse to vote for them because they are not Christian as they claim to be, while religious and political liberals see Mormons as part of a repressive religious coalition along with evangelicals and Catholics. Mormon politicians are in an awkward position between these two sides of America's “culture war,” not fully accepted by either. Using new survey questions about attitudes towards Mormons and Mitt Romney, this paper explores the nature of the two anti-Mormonisms and their electoral consequences. I argue that feelings about Mormonism have been an important factor in respondent evaluations of Mitt Romney.