When Did Latter-day Saints Start Leaning Republican?

In the United States, the First Presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints disbanded its “People's Party” in 1891. Church leaders invited members to join either the Democrats or the Republicans. These leaders wanted to become more mainstream and help the cause of Utah statehood. They also thought that political diversity could help members shape local and national elections.

That contest to win voters to the two major political parties created more heat than light. In the April 1892 general conference, President Wilford Woodruff counseled the Saints to stop fighting. “Every man has as much right—prophets, apostles, saints, and sinners—to his political convictions as he has to his religious opinions,” he said, adding, “Don't throw filth and dirt and nonsense at one another because of any difference on political matters" (“General Conference,” Deseret Evening News, 5 April 1892, 4).

At that time, many felt that believing members could only be Democrats and not Republicans because Republicans were the leaders of the antipolygamy crusade. During a priesthood session in St. George, apostle Francis Lyman said believing members were needed in both political parties. “We don't want anyone who is a Democrat to change,” he told them. “There is much less difference between the two parties than at first thought” (Francis Marion Lyman, Journal, 11 September 1982).

So when did Latter-day Saints start leaning Republican? Here's excellent analysis by my friend Joseph Stuart, a PhD student in history at the University of Utah:

In 1904, the United States Senate convened hearings to ascertain whether Reed Smoot, Utah’s junior senator and an apostle for the LDS Church, could hold his seat in Congress. Senate Republicans, largely self-identified Protestants, questioned whether Smoot could serve the people of Utah in an unbiased matter, given his connection to his church, which they argued, had never followed through on promises to Americanize. These Republicans viewed Smoot as the LDS Church’s puppet, incapable of making moral decisions because of his professed faith, which they viewed as a “false” religion. Kathleen Flake has shown in her book The Politics of American Religious Identity that Smoot and the Republican Party came to a political agreement during the trial’s three-year duration. Smoot would support their policy platforms and work to flip Utah’s residents to the Grand Old Party. In return, they would stop calling LDS leaders to answer questions about their church on the Senate floor. The deal worked for both sides. However, there’s no question as to who wielded the most power in the relationship. Mormons acquiesced to a national political party and won political influence. Republican Party leaders gained a crucial electoral constituency and did not have to recognize Mormonism as a religion on the same level as Protestant Christianity.  

Utah’s white Mormons became more Republican over time. The Beehive State and its Latter-day Saint citizens did not align strictly with Republicans or Democrats through the mid-twentieth century, despite some LDS leaders who identified the New Deal’s social safety net as bad for the nation’s spiritual health. The partisanship expressed by individual leaders did not stop Latter-day Saints from voting for Franklin Roosevelt in each of his four presidential campaigns.

Many Latter-day Saint Democrats, including Senator Elbert D. Thomas of Utah, promoted President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal, feeling that his leadership was the best pathway out of the Great Depression.

The Red Scare of 1950 changed the trajectory of the country. “In the early months of 1950,” wrote Richard Swanson, “Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin embarked on what may be recorded as a most energetic attempt to rid the United States of persons linked, even remotely, with Communist sympathies or associations. . . . Capitalizing on the prevalent mood of disgust with foreign policy failures, the junior senator offered the oversimplified explanation that Communists had infiltrated high-level State and Defense Department positions” (Richard Swanson, “McCarthyism in Utah” [master’s thesis, Brigham Young University, 1977], 1). Swanson wrote that “the use of slanderous insinuations to give the impression that a politician was pro-Communist was widespread and effective in Utah,” and “the first victim of this deluge of McCarthyism was the state’s senior senator, Democrat Elbert Thomas” (Swanson, “McCarthyism in Utah,” 99). 

During the 1950 senatorial campaign, attack ads “accused [Thomas] of presiding at Communist meetings and of sponsoring leftist organizations. He was cartooned as a puppet of the Communists and the radical unionists,” and “the Republican candidate, Wallace Bennett, did nothing to deter the attacks,” wrote historian Richard D. Poll (Richard D. Poll, David E. Miller, Eugene E. Campbell, and Thomas G. Alexander, eds., Utah’s History [Provo, UT: Brigham Young University Press, 1978], 518). Even though Senator Thomas was not a Communist, his critics “publicized enough implicative insinuations and accusations” that Thomas was defeated in the election cycle of 1950.

President David O. McKay and Elder Ezra Taft Benson passionately preached against communism during the 1950s and 1960s, and this sometimes led to tension within church leadership, particularly the First Presidency. Elder Benson was so vocal in his crusade against socialism that the First Presidency censured and then called him to preside in the European Mission to keep him out from US politics. When President McKay died in 1970, Elder Benson subdued his political activity until 1973 when he became President of the Twelve and spoke out against socialism (see Matthew L. Harris, Thunder from the Right: Ezra Taft Benson in Mormonism and Politics [Urbana: University of Illinois, 2019], and http://www.mormonpress.com/ezra-taft-benson-and-politics).

Membership in both parties continued to be divided fairly evenly until the mid-1970s when abortion became, for many members, a big issue leading them to affiliate with Republicans. (It is noteworthy that nearly all believing Democrats likewise oppose abortion.)

For many years Utah, like several other states, allowed abortions only to save a mother’s life. In 1973 the US Supreme Court case Roe v. Wade struck down state abortion laws. Roe v. Wade proved to be a continental divide for American political parties. Before the decision, Democrats were more pro-life because more Catholics were Democrats. More Republicans were pro-choice. After the decision, leaders in Congress helped define each party's stance, with some voters changing parties. From that time onward, as former Deseret News reporter Rod Decker noted, “more religious people tended Republican, and less religious people went with the Democrats. Utah followed that national pattern. . . . As positions clarified, Utah voters became more Republican. After Roe, Utah never voted for another Democrat for president or senator” (Rod Decker, Utah Politics: The Elephant in the Room [Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2019], 56).

Rod Decker. Courtesy of KUTV.

America’s bicentennial year of 1976 was the year the vast majority of membership of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints went Republican. “1976 was what the Republican ascendancy started, right after Roe v. Wade,” Decker said in a recent KUTV interview. That continental divide continues in Utah—and in our nation.