There are at least two explanations for why Romney’s Mormonism matters so little among this powerful voting bloc.  First, evangelicals seem to care more about political ideology than orthodox theology as far as voting is concerned. Polls show that voters care most about the economy, not faith.

Mitt Romney has an evangelical problem. Or so we’ve been told by everyone from The New Yorker to The Huffington Post to The Daily Beast. The national media have perpetuated this narrative throughout the election season, and political pundits aplenty have assumed its reliability in their columns and commentary.   

But there’s one glaring problem with the storyline: It’s not true.   

“Evangelicals say they want a presidential candidate who shares their religious beliefs and they still hold that Romney’s religion is different from their own,” says Robert Jones, CEO of the Washington-based Public Religion Research Institute. “And yet as early as May 2012, shortly after it became clear that Romney was the presumptive nominee, Romney held a 45-point lead over Obama” among evangelicals.   

We’ve been told that evangelicals were so skeptical of Romney’s Mormon faith they might not be able to pull the lever for him in the voting booth. But according to Jones’ research, as more white evangelical voters have realized that he is Mormon, his favorability among them has actually risen.   

The rift seems to be not among evangelical voters but among some old guard evangelical leaders. Who can forget Dallas pastor Robert Jeffress’ comments that Romney was a part of a “theological cult” at the 2011 Values Voter Summit? And then there was the January summit of more than 150 high-powered evangelical leaders in Texas to determine which candidate should receive their collective blessing.    

They endorsed Rick Santorum on the third ballot, but in the South Carolina primaries a week later, Newt Gingrich and Romney took two-thirds of the state’s evangelical votes. In many of the primaries that followed, evangelicals continued to vote for Romney in significant numbers until he became the presumptive nominee. Contrary to the popular media narrative, polls conducted during both the 2008 and 2012 elections showed only a minority of evangelicals said they would not vote for a Mormon.   

Nonetheless, the Romney campaign has been concerned about whether the former Massachusetts governor can capture the hearts and minds of American evangelicals. They know he can’t win without them because they are a big part of the Republican base. Actually, they’re almost all of it.   

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