USA - Less than half of Americans say they “feel comfortable” with Mitt Romney’s Mormon religion, the latest NBC/Wall Street Journal poll found.
Forty-seven percent of adults said they’re comfortable with Romney’s faith, while 21 percent said they were not and 31 percent said they didn’t know enough to say.
Romney fared better among Republican primary voters. Sixty-six percent of GOP voters said they’re comfortable with Romney’s Mormonism. Thirteen percent say they weren’t and 20 percent said they didn’t know enough to give an answer.
The difference between responses from primary and general election voters could suggest a couple different things. It could be that for non-Republicans, Mormonism is identified with hard-line cultural conservative, and so more general election voters find it unsettling.
Alternatively, it’s possible that the GOP primary numbers understate voters’ reservations. The narrative that evangelical voters dislike Mormons has gotten a very public airing, and so some respondents may fib to the pollster to avoid sounding bigoted. (Robert Jeffress suggested exactly this explanation last week in reference to Mitt Romney’s solid polling numbers.)
Here’s the exact wording of the question:
As you may know, Mitt Romney is a member of the Mormon faith. Based on what you have heard, would you say that you feel comfortable with Mitt Romney and that his religious beliefs will not interfere with his decisions as president, you do not feel comfortable with Mitt Romney and worry his religious beliefs will interfere with his decisions as president, or don't you know enough to say either way?