Conventional wisdom is that Trump’s ostentatious playboy persona is fundamentally at odds with the state’s sizable block of socially conservative Latter-day Saint voters.
Although pundits once predicted that Utah’s Trump slump would extend to the rest of the religious right, a new Pew Research Center report finds that nearly eight in 10 white evangelicals support Trump, a higher percentage than supported Mitt Romney in 2012. Yet, as Terry Mattingly cautions, the religious right is hardly “flocking” toward Trump. Rather, Pew’s numbers show that evangelicals, like many other Americans, are deeply dissatisfied with both presidential nominees.
And yet, what can account for the difference between Latter-day Saints and evangelicals, two historically similar voting blocks, when it comes to supporting Trump? The answer, it turns out, may have more to do with behavioral economics than policy platforms or religious affiliations.
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