On Tuesday, March 22, Republicans in Utah will make their voice heard as to who they support to be the Republican nominee for President. The Utah Republican Caucus offers a total of 40 delegates to the National convention and are allocated on a hybrid system. If a single candidate earns 50% of the vote, they take all 40 delegates, but if no candidate reaches that threshold, they are divided proportionately among the delegates that obtain at least 15% of the vote.
Utah is important to the Republican nomination process for a number of reasons, First, Utah is one of the first major states to vote after the exit of Marco Rubio from the race, and how his support is divided between the remaining candidates will be important to the rest of the nominating cycle. Also unknown is the effect of John Kasich’s continued campaign on Ted Cruz’s ability to compete with Donald Trump. The most important factor in determining Trump’s performance is how the Mormon population of the state, which represents a majority, will respond to him.
Adding to the uncertainty is the fact that the 2012 Republican Nominee Mitt Romney is a Mormon, serving in a way, the role that John F. Kennedy played for Catholics in 1960. Romney carried the state by very large margins both in the 2008 and 2012 primaries, as well as the national election in 2012. Romney has been one of the most outspoken critics of Donald Trump, calling him a bully and criticizing his policies. One has to wonder if the opinion of such an apparently popular figure in Utah can hold sway with the Mormon majority.
Leadership in the Mormon church also has in the past spoken out against Trump on the issue of banning Muslim immigrants from the United States, and saying that it violated the idea of religious liberty. One reason for this apparent disagreement in policy is a history that the Mormon church has of being discriminated against. During the 19th century, Mormon practitioners were essentially forced to leave the United States and settle in what would become Utah. While Utah, and the Mormon population were eventually integrated into the United States, it was only after a military expedition, and the changing of several parts of their doctrine. This history may be responsible for this sympathy and support that the church is offering to the Muslim community. Corey Barnett, from World Religion News also points out that Trump lost the primaries of the states with the second and third largest Mormon populations, Idaho and Wyoming respectively.
While this evidence would suggest a disappointing night for Trump, he has defied expectations in the past by performing well with evangelical Christians, which were predicted to go for Ted Cruz.
-Trevor Alm
Sources:
http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/18/politics/donald-trump-mormon-mitt-romney-utah/
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/04/us/politics/mitt-romney-speech.html?_r=0
http://www.worldreligionnews.com/religion-news/christianity/why-mormons-do-not-like-trump
contemporaryamericanreligion 