Hillary Clinton’s low-risk, low-cost, low-reward Mormon outreach

Low-reward

There is not much upside to Clinton’s LDS outreach, such as it is. Even if she risked the ire of her core coalition (which she won’t), there is not much to gain politically. If Clinton wins Utah, she will be elected in a once-in-a-generation landslide. But even if she does not, she has a much better chance to win battleground states that President Obama won in 2008 but that flipped back to the Republican column in 2012.

Even though Mormons are likelier than, say, evangelical Protestants to believe Trump’s obnoxiousness is disqualifying, there is nothing in the present political landscape that points toward a realignment of Mormon voters to the Democratic Party. We should keep an eye on how strongly Utah’s non-Mormons identify with the Democrats. And we should always pay close attention to religious groups’ rates of fertility, intra-marriage, and adult retention.

But Utah remains a solidly conservative state. There’s not much Mrs. Clinton could do to change that, and even if there was, it would almost certainly not be worth the cost.