Don Bradley wrote: ↑Wed Mar 01, 2023 5:00 am
Nomomo,
Suppose we looked at the statistics on how many Republicans believe the Big Lie vs. how many Democrats believe it. What would you expect to find? Take a sec to think about that.
What we would find - which I'm sure is exactly what you predicted - is that a majority of Republicans believe it--about 65%--while a negligible number of Democrats do. (In fact, I've yet to find a study that cites any significant percentage of Democrats believing the Big Lie.)
Now, let's note how many people in these religious groupings are Republican/Republican-leaning, and then we can compare that with the statistics you cite above:
Republican/Republican-leaning:
White evangelical Protestants: 78%
Latter-day Saints: 74%
White mainline Protestants: 54%
White Catholics: 48%
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/20 ... rtisanship
White evangelical Protestants tend to believe the Republican candidate's election fraud claims because they are overwhelmingly Republicans. Non-evangelical white Protestants tend to believe Trump's lies less because they are less likely to be Republicans. Similarly, Catholics believe Trump's election lies still less because they are still less likely to be Republicans.
Thus, the reason that more members of certain religious groups believed election fraud claims by the Republican candidate is that more members of those groups are Republicans. And the reason that fewer members of certain religious groups believed election fraud claims by the Republican candidate is that fewer members of those groups are Republicans.
Alongside acknowledging the pernicious character of Trump's election lies, it also to be acknowledged that--realistically--opinions on claims of this nature tend strongly to break down on partisan political lines. For instance, after the 2000 election, a majority of Democrats, but not Republicans, thought George with. Bush had not been legitimately elected. And, similarly, after the 2016 election, a majority of Democrats, but no Republicans, thought Donald Trump had not been legitimately elected.
With that reality in mind, let's look again at the statistics you cited:
*White evangelical Protestants: 78% are Republican; and 61% of white Evangelicals believed Trump's fraud claims
- 61% divided by 78% is (coincidentally) 78%, meaning that 78% of white Evangelical conservatives believed Trump's lie
*Latter-day Saints: 74% are Republican; 46% of them believed Trump's fraud claims - 62%
- Thus, 62% of Latter-day Saint conservatives believed Trump's lie
*White mainline Protestants: 54% are Republican; 37% of them believed Trump's fraud claims
- Thus, 69% of white mainline Protestants believed Trump's lie
*White Catholics: 48% are Republicans; 35% of them believed Trump's fraud claims
- Thus, 73% of white Catholic conservatives believed Trump's lie
The question in the OP has been answered:
It's quite clear why more Latter-day Saints believed the Republican candidate than did white Catholics - because more Latter-day Saints than white Catholics
are Republicans.
Now that question needs to be turned on its head to raise a much more interesting question:
Why did far fewer Latter-day Saint Republicans (62%) believe the Republican candidate's election lie than did white Catholic Republicans (73%), white mainline Protestant Republicans (69%), and white evangelical Republicans (78%)?
Notably, among the few Republicans to resist Donald Trump's attempts to interfere in our election system are Mormon Republicans--among them Rep. Rusty Bowers, Sen. Jeff Flake, and most notably Mitt Romney: the first United States Senator in history to vote
against party lines in a presidential impeachment.
So, reworking the OP question in line with the statistics above and in light of Mormon Republican leaders taking the strongest stand against Trump and his 2016 and 2020 attempts to subvert our elections, we might also phrase our new question:
Why are Mormon Republicans less extreme or less gullible--or maybe just more honest--than white Catholic, mainline, and evangelical Republicans?
Don