WASHINGTON — George W. Bush campaigned hard to woo blacks and Hispanics. But members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints actually gave him as many votes as black Protestants and Hispanic Catholics and Protestants combined.
A new national survey on religion and politics estimates that 88 percent of LDS Church members nationally voted for Bush, accounting for 3 percent of his total vote.
Black Protestants, Hispanic Protestants and Hispanic Catholics each gave Bush about 1 percent of his overall vote.
LDS Church members even voted more heavily for Bush than Jews did for Al Gore, despite the presence of Joseph Lieberman, the first Jew on a major party presidential ticket, as Gore's vice presidential running mate.
Those findings were sidelights of a poll conducted for the Ethics and Public Policy Center by the University of Akron Survey Research Center. It was funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts.
Its major finding was that more active churchgoers tended to support Bush, while less active churchgoers and "seculars," who say they do not belong to a church, sided more with Gore.
John C. Green, a political science professor at the University of Akron, who oversaw the survey, said he was also struck by the apparent overwhelming support by LDS Church members for Bush.
"We broke out (in poll findings) the Mormons — the Latter-day Saints — because they are solidly Republican," he told a Washington press conference. "In fact, in most surveys, they turn out to be the most Republican of the religious groups, more so than evangelicals."
But Green noted an important caveat to findings on LDS voters. His national survey of 2,363 voters was large enough to provide statistically high confidence in findings of overall trends. But only "a few dozen" LDS Church members were among that overall number — too small a sampling to give much statistical confidence about their activity as a subgroup.
"What that means is to look at some of the smaller groups with caution," he said. But he said LDS voters — and some other groups — had "such strikingly different patterns of voting that we suspect that even if we had hundreds (of respondents in each group,) we'd get very similar results."
While the survey estimated that 88 percent of LDS voters supported Bush, it estimated that only 77 percent of Jews support the Gore/Lieberman ticket.
The only religious group identified by the survey as having more lopsided support for any candidate than LDS voters was black Protestants, who gave 96 percent of their vote to Gore.
But John J. DiIulio, a professor of politics and religion at the University of Pennsylvania, said that may represent more racial bias than religion. In recent years, blacks have voted overwhelmingly for Democrats because they have put high emphasis on civil rights and received strong endorsements from black leaders.
Leaders of LDS Church have been careful through the years not to endorse any party. Three years ago, they urged greater political participation by members but reaffirmed a neutral stance on parties.
Also, when LDS Church President Gordon B. Hinckley was asked jokingly last year at a National Press Club appearance if it is possible to be a good Mormon and a Democrat, he said that it is, again reinforcing the church's neutrality regarding the political parties.
The survey estimated that 40 percent of Bush's vote came from white, evangelical Protestants, 21 percent from mainline Protestants and 20 percent from Catholics, with the rest coming from smaller groups.
For Gore, 19 percent of the votes came from black Protestants, 19 percent from "seculars," 20 percent from Catholics, 13 percent from white evangelical Protestants and 12 percent from white mainline Protestants. Less than 1 percent of his votes came from LDS Church members.
The survey also divided Protestants and Catholics into "more observant" groups (who reported attending church at least weekly) and "less observant."
More observant white evangelical Protestants gave 84 percent of their support to Bush, and only 16 percent to Gore. More observant white mainline Protestants gave Bush 66 percent of their votes. More observant Roman Catholics gave Bush 57 percent of their vote.
Green speculated that the most observant churchgoers may have been disaffected by President Clinton's moral scandals and Gore's support of the president through the impeachment hearings. He noted that Gore talked much about his own faith, but it tended to come only in spurts and did not appear to be convincing to the most active churchgoers.
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