Blog 5

It is an exciting time for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints as republican governor Mitt Romney, a LDS from Massachusetts, runs for president of the United States. All question, will he or will he not win the presidency. However, putting aside the fact that an LDS man is running for president, there is a high assumption that LDS people are mainly republicans. Is this true, does the LDS people really have such a high political identity that most people can assume that they are republicans? And what causes this?

Its first important to look at what is political identity. According to David J. Samuels in the book Comparative Politics, political identity is, “The way individuals categorize themselves and others” (Samuels). Knowing this, there is a distinct LDS political identity in the United States towards the republican party which is formed through a mix of two theories called primordialism and constructivism. Most members tend to identify republican because many of the views of the party correlate with LDS moral and political views. Though, there are still many LDS members that feel that they best represented by democratic party and therefore identify most with them. However, it is seen that there are even democratic LDS members who could politically identify themselves with a republican president because they believe that it would be good for the church. In a Utah Data Points blog written by Kelly Patterson it showed that 54% of LDS democrats believe that Governor Mitt Romney’s candidacy as president would be good for the church despite his opposing views. (Patterson) Though LDS democrats and republicans do not share the same political views there is a political identity of being in the same religion first that governs how both sides see each other and the government.

What causes this political identity to form for the LDS community? There seems to be a mixture of both primordialism and constructivism when it comes to causes for a political identity in the LDS church. Primordialism is the believe that political identity is formed by either being born into, or something that “ emerges unconsciously during childhood” (Samuels). Constructivism is an assumption that,“ forms, meaning, and political salience of different forms of identity can change” (Samuels). So many families are republican and it is talked about so much in the homes that it makes an impression on the children’s views. There was a boy from a great LDS family who would go around and talk about his complaints for the state of California, the president of the United States, and just the overall government of this country. It was very impressive that a boy at such a young age would have know so much and have such an opinion until you realized that he was just saying exactly what his parents were saying. He did not have all the facts but his parents had made a political impression on him and he believed what his parents believed. This is an example of primordialism that occurs quite a bit in LDS families. On the other end though, there has been many LDS people who will change their views with the ones that would be the most beneficial in helping the church spread the gospel. Those identities can change from either democratic or republican views proving that identities can be malleable and therefore constructivism.

There are many democratic as well as republican LDS members in the United States. However, most will first and foremost identify as members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. This is there identity as a people and it ultimately effects, through a mixture of primordialism and constructivism, their political identity as well.

Work Cited

Patterson, Kelly. "Who Thinks Governor Romney’s Candidacy Is Good for the LDS Church?" Web log post. Utah Data Points. UT Data, 2 Aug. 2012. Web. 11 Oct. 2012. <http://utahdatapoints.com/>.

Samuels, David. Comparative Politics. NYC: Pearson Education, 2011. Print.