When people think of ex-Mormons, what comes to mind is probably liberals who don’t like The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ policy stance against gay marriage or ordaining women.
A new analysis challenges that assumption. It shows that people who leave the church lean Republican.
Looking at a sample of 316 ex-Mormons in the 2024 Pew Religious Landscape Study, the Mormon Metric blog found that 37% were Democrats and 41% Republicans. The remainder were independent. A decade before that, those numbers skewed the opposite direction.
The shift could be driven by a change in church leaders’ rhetoric, said Brigham Young University political science professor Quin Monson. He’s seen tensions rise between the church and members on the far right. The Pew data set doesn’t look at why people are leaving the church, but Monson said its political stance — which he characterizes as center-right — might give someone a reason to leave, or at least, no reason to stay.
For example, the church strongly urged members to wear masks and get vaccinated during the COVID-19 pandemic. And after the LDS Church’s effort to pass California’s Proposition 8 to ban gay marriage in 2008, the church moved to a different strategy — religious freedom and fairness for all. It endorsed a 2009 non-discrimination ordinance in Salt Lake City and the 2022 federal Respect for Marriage Act.
“This church is still not for gay marriage, but in a way that is pretty accommodating, as far as you can be, while not sanctioning it,” Monson said. “It's kind of an interesting position, and it doesn't make other religious traditions very happy about the church often.”
There’s always been a far-right group within the church, but they’re not getting the same validation now as they did in the 1950s, he said. There’s been a subtle shift in rhetoric since the church accelerated its efforts in the 60s and 70s to standardize its messaging, tamping down on any partisan edge.
Ex-Mormons are also less college-educated than people who stay in the LDS Church. Alex Bass, the data scientist behind Mormon Metrics, attributes this to larger political forces at work.
“One of the big movements the last 20 years in politics is a realignment of people who are educated,” he said. “Before, the working-class Americans were a lot more likely to support Bill Clinton or Obama.”
In 2024, President Donald Trump won voters without college degrees 56% to 42%, double the margin of his 2016 victory, according to Pew Research.
Another finding is that today’s ex-Mormons are more Republican than the people who leave any other religion in the United States. In fact, members of other religious groups are moving to the political right while Latter-day Saints are shifting left.
That tracks with BYU professor Monson’s experience — he said their ties with the Republican Party are weakening.
“Latter-day Saints are kind of exceptional in the sense that white evangelicals have gone all in on Donald Trump, and Latter-day Saints haven't as much,” he said.
He’s found in his research that Latter-day Saints take cues from church leaders. And while they’re not delivering partisan statements and have vowed political neutrality, he believes the coded messages that come through aren’t very pro-Trump.
