What do Mormons think about Governor Romney’s candidacy?

The 2012 presidential candidacy of Governor Romney has shined a spotlight on the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. As the first member of the LDS Church to win a major party nomination, his candidacy has inspired both favorable and unfavorable coverage of the LDS faith.

What do members of the LDS faith generally think about his candidacy? Are they excited to see it? Do they believe the media will portray their faith accurately?

A recent statewide survey of voters conducted in cooperation with Key Research, a survey and market research company in Utah, sheds some light on these questions. While it is not a national survey, members of the LDS faith in Utah share many similarities with those outside of the state.

When asked to reflect on Governor Romney’s accomplishment of securing the Republican nomination, members of the LDS faith overwhelmingly said it was a good thing.

It would be difficult to tell whether they believed it was a good thing because of his politics or because of the shared faith, but either way, the belief is that his candidacy is a positive event.

When asked how excited they are for his candidacy, Mormons once again express positive emotions. 83% of Mormons say that his candidacy makes them “very excited” or “somewhat excited.”

The publicity brought to the LDS faith by his candidacy is evaluated much more as a mixed bag. When asked what kind of publicity they thought the LDS Church will receive, a large majority said the candidacy would result in “both good and bad publicity.”

Part of the ambivalence for the kind of media coverage may stem from the low levels of trust in the media. 67.5% said they did not trust the media to cover the Church fairly, and after the diatribes of the Lawrence O’Donnells of the world, who can blame them?

Many in the media have dubbed 2012 the “Mormon Moment.” Members of the LDS faith seem to appreciate the historic dimensions of Governor Romney’s candidacy. But they remain wary of what the publicity might bring.

Update (June 26, 2012): We’ve now posted a full set of results along with a more detailed methodological report for the survey.

Survey Methodology

The sample was drawn from the publicly available file of Utah registered voters. A model of general election turnout was estimated using age, party registration status, length of registration, and past election turnout. This model was used to estimate a probability of voting in the 2012 general election. A Probability Proportionate to Size (PPS) sample was drawn using this turnout estimate such that voters with a higher probability of voting have a higher probability of being selected in the sample. For a detailed explanation of a similar model used with PPS sampling in an online survey, see Michael Barber, Chris Mann, J. Quin Monson, and Kelly D. Patterson. “Online Polls and Registration Based Sampling: A New Method for Pre-election Polling.” The sample was then matched to a database of telephone numbers and sampled voters were administered a questionnaire over the telephone by Key Research. The survey field dates were June 12, 2012 – June 19, 2012. The full sample of 500 produces a margin of error of 4.4%. The analysis in this post is limited to self-identified Mormons (n=341) with a margin of error of 5.3%.

Possibly related posts:

• Who Do Mormons Say Represents Their Faith Positively?
• Do LDS Dems like Mitt Romney?
• Key Research Poll General Election Predictions

Possibly related posts (automatically generated)

• Who Do Mormons Say Represents Their Faith Positively? (October 25, 2012)
• Do LDS Dems like Mitt Romney? (August 22, 2012)
• Why Mitt Romney is not the inevitable nominee (November 22, 2011)