Democrats Have Bigger Anti-Mormon Problem in Election Than GOP Has
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/04/23/democrats-have-bigger-anti-mormon-problem-in-election-than-gop.htmlby Peter Beinart
Apr 23, 2012 4:45 AM EDT
Polls show 27 percent of Democrats would not vote for a Mormon, versus 18 percent of Republicans. There are votes in anti-Mormonism, but the Obama campaign must resist any temptation to play on it.
With just over six months before Election Day, the 2012 presidential campaign looks dull but astonishing. It’s dull because Barack Obama no longer elicits the kind of passion he did in 2008, and Mitt Romney has never elicited much passion at all. But it’s astonishing because it features an African-American and a Mormon, two of the most discriminated-against groups in American history. In the year of Romney’s birth (1947) or Obama’s (1961), the idea that a presidential election would one day pit an American of Romney’s religion versus an American of Obama’s race would have boggled the mind.
When Obama first ran in 2008, Republicans wrestled with how to attack him without playing on antiblack bigotry. Now it’s the Democrats’ turn to be tempted. In the United States anti-Mormon bigotry has remained remarkably durable. According to Gallup, the percentage of Americans who say they would not vote for a Catholic, a woman, an African-American, or a Jew has dropped sharply since the 1960s and 1970s. The percentage saying they would not vote for a Mormon, however, hasn’t budged. In 1967, the first year Gallup asked the question, 17 percent of Americans said they would not back a Mormon candidate. When Gallup asked again last summer, the figure had risen to 22 percent.
Despite the media’s obsession with the alleged anti-Mormonism of evangelical Christians, the party with the larger anti-Mormon problem is the Democrats. According to Gallup, while only 18 percent of Republicans said they would oppose a Mormon candidate, among Democrats the figure was 27 percent. As if on cue, Montana’s Democratic governor, Brian Schweitzer, last week volunteered that women would not back Romney because his father was “born on a polygamy commune in Mexico.”
To its credit, the Obama campaign repudiated Schweitzer’s statement. But between now and Election Day, anti-Mormonism is going to be the Democratic Party’s constant temptation for one simple reason: there are votes in it.
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The question was:
"If your party nominated a generally well-qualified person for president who happened to be (ITEM A-I READ IN ORDER), would you vote for that person?"
There's no discrimination against atheists in the US.
After making up a claim without doing any research and then being proven wrong with the actual data (showing that the trend is "no change"
, what do you have to say?
since that's where I think you'll find people who wouldn't vote for an atheist on principle. If any DUer could ask people in churches if they feel that way, and if so why, it would be good to know.
One guess: some theists feel that people without a belief in a supreme being will behave how they want, without a concern for retribution (apart from the criminal law). Perhaps they think the US presidency is so powerful a position that only the risk of everlasting hell-fire can keep the president in line. Polls that ask about a Muslim president as well do seem to show a Muslim would be more popular than an atheist, eg http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2011/11/09/would-you-be-comfortable-with-an-atheist-president-2011-survey-says/ - Republican and Independent numbers about the same, but Democrats significantly more comfortable with a Muslim president than an atheist one.
Call them 'not religious' and the numbers get a bit better. When talking about the groups, rather than a presidential candidate, notice that both evangelical Christians, and non-Christians (religious only, or not, I'm not sure), think atheists are worse than scientologists. 
When you're more unpopular than a bunch of cult con-artists, you know there's a mountain to climb. But look how ads saying "you can be good without God", which is the basic message needed to erase the fear of atheists, get attacked. In a final attempt to be completely non-offensive, while making a joke to those who've followed the 'atheist billboard' wars, they're going to use this:
Another possibility: Americans of a certain age were brainwashed to associate 'atheist' with 'communist'. However, I'd have expected that effect to continue to wear off.
