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The competition for Latter-day Saint votes in Arizona in this week’s U.S. presidential election certainly appears justified now.
It likely will be some time before any kind of exit polling, if any will exist, provides direct information into the voting patterns of members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in what became one of the key states in the election. And clearly, Latino voters had a major impact on swinging Arizona to Joe Biden.
But one poll conducted shortly before the election included an oversample of church members in Arizona and provides clear insight into the kind of impact they might have had.
Y2 Analytics surveyed 216 church members in Arizona from Oct. 15-24 with a plus/minus rating of 7%. Early voting in Arizona began on Oct. 7, so the poll was in the field while voting was underway.
The poll found that 75% of church members Arizona reported voting for President Donald Trump in 2016 and that 76% said they would vote for him this time.
But while support for the president was steady, support rose significantly for his opponent.
Just 9% of Arizona Latter-day Saints said they voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016, according to the survey. Support for Biden doubled that figure.
So Trump’s visit to Arizona last week may have shored up his base and kept them in his camp. The same may be true of Utah Sen. Mike Lee’s appearance with the president.
Trump plainly did better in Utah, however.
“Some of those Latter-day Saints who abandoned Trump for third-party candidates last time came home to Trump in Utah, and others went to Biden,” Y2’s Quin Monson said of Tuesday’s results. “They sort of split” third-party candidate Evan McMullin’s 2016 votes, he added.
The 2016 Utah vote looked like this:
- Trump 45.5%
- Clinton 27.5%
- McMullin 21.5%.
The 2020 Utah returns, as of Thursday morning looked like this:
- Trump 58.5%
- Biden 37.9%
“Biden outperformed Clinton, I mean, that’s very clear. That’s clear both in Utah and Arizona,” Monson said.
“From the limited data available,” he added, “Trump doesn’t seem to have done a lot better than he did in 2016 among Latter-day Saints in Arizona, but Biden does better than Clinton did. It’s not a big group, so it doesn’t change things dramatically, but it does change things at the margin, and I think it adds up to significant pile of votes.”
Y2 Analytics estimated there are 200,000 Latter-day Saint voters in Arizona, so Biden’s additional 9 percentage points over Clinton may have been 18,000 votes in a state where Biden, according to results available Thursday morning, leads by fewer than 69,000 votes.
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One of my favorite movies is “The Hunt for Red October,” which cemented me as a huge fan of Sean Connery. I had loved his character in “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade,” too. I’ll never forget what an enjoyable surprise it was to see him pop up as King Richard at the end of “Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.” It’s safe to say I loved his Scottish accent, too. So I was sad to see that he died Saturday at age 90. I enjoyed this short piece on Connery and the accompanying personal video from his “Red October” co-star, Alec Baldwin.