According to a Gallup poll released Monday, slightly more than one in five Americans say they would not consider voting for a presidential candidate who is Mormon, even if they think that person is otherwise qualified to be the nation’s chief executive.
In the survey, 22% of adults said they would not vote for a Mormon, while 76% said they would.
That finding came one day before former Utah Governor Jon Huntsman was expected to formally launch his campaign, making him the second Mormon, along with Mitt Romney, in the Republican field. Further, it shows that faith could once again become an issue in this year’s presidential election, as it was in 2008. In that election cycle, Romney was so dogged by questions about his faith that he ultimately delivered a speech aimed at assuaging those concerns, telling voters that as a Mormon he was still a Christian.
Though a vast majority of respondents said they would vote for a Mormon, they were comparatively far more receptive toward supporting black (94%), female (93%) or Hispanic (89%) candidates, or from other Christian denominations like Catholicism (89%.)
Respondents were only slightly less receptive to the idea of supporting a gay or lesbian candidate than they were to the idea of backing a Mormon; sixty-seven percent said they would vote for such a candidate, while 32% said they would not.
On the bright side for Romney and Huntsman, Republicans were more open than Democrats to the idea of a Mormon President, which could mean his faith will be less important in the Republican primary than it will be in a general election. Eighty percent of self-identified Republicans said they would vote for a Mormon while 18% said they would not. By contrast, 71% of Democrats said they’d support a Mormon, versus 27% who said they would not.
The Gallup poll was conducted June 9-12 among 1,020 adults nationwide. It has a margin of error of 4.0%
