Originally published Sunday, Oct. 30, 2011, at MuddyPolitics.com.
A majority of Americans don’t know that Mitt Romney is Mormon.
Unlike in 2008, Romney isn't wearing his faith on his sleeve...or his forehead. According to the a Public Religion Research Institute poll, 42 percent of Americans can correctly identify Romney’s religious faith, while 45 percent admitted they didn’t know. Another 10 percent falsely answered that he is Protestant, Catholic, “something else” or “not religious.”
When a Pew Research Center poll in early October showed that Romney is less known as the frontrunner in the 2012 Republican presidential race (27 percent) than he was as a third-tier, third-place finisher in the 2008 election cycle (30 percent), I put forth a theory that Romney’s under-the-radar campaign presence was more of a “victory-by-default” strategy than it was a casualty or a curse.
With his unflattering record of flip-flopping on hot-button issues, his unconventional religious views and his awkwardness when courting voters during off-camera public events, staying out of the limelight (including foregoing the presidential straw polls, as he’s done) serves to perpetuate the public’s disinterest in and ignorance of the Republican nomination contest.
And maybe that’s the point.
“If the party can’t make up its mind, and if the base doesn’t have a mind at all, the sensation-seeking Perrys, Bachmanns, Pauls and Cains will rise and inevitably fall by the sword of the media recognition they so ardently seek, leaving Romney as the last man standing.”
So is this latest poll at all surprising?
Not really.
There are obvious reasons for not running on faith-based presidential campaign – the biggest one being that a third of Americans do not view Mormonism as a Christian religion (bad news for a Mormon Republican in the primary race). The other is that America is now more secular than it ever has been in its entire history (bad news for any religiously affiliated candidate in the general election).
Other than a few controversial statements recently about Mormonism being a cult, the general public has had few opportunities to learn about Romney’s faith. Out of nine Republican presidential debates this year, Mormonism was mentioned a grand total of four times.
And as the rather boring, uninspiring, buttoned-up frontrunner-by-default, Romney has steered clear of excessive media attention, which has allowed him to sit back and watch as the struggling campaigns of Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, and most recently Herman Cain fight for the media’s and public’s attention with controversial statements, weird campaign advertisements or targeted character assassinations against one another. The other good news for Romney is that attacking a candidate’s religion is viewed no less harshly than attacking one’s family. His GOP challengers have mostly avoided the issue.
That fact that Romney doesn’t mention his own religion in his own biography on his own presidential election website I think pretty well sums up the former Massachusetts governor’s strategy for winning the Republican nomination: voter ignorance is bliss.
So far, the strategy seems to be working.
In the two most recent public opinion polls (from Fox News and CBS News/NYT), Romney ranked just 4 percent and 6 percent above the “don’t know/too soon to tell/someone else” option.
This obviously isn’t where Romney needs to be polling in order to win the nomination, but it’s not something Romney is out on the campaign trail trying to correct. An under-the-radar strategy, given the extremist views of his competitors, may actually prove effective for the comparatively sane, level-headed Romney as voters start paying more attention to these candidates.
In response to the question, “which Republican candidate for president has political views closest to your own?” 20 percent of respondents in the Public Religion Research Institute poll chose Romney, 17 percent said Herman Cain, and 12 percent picked Ron Paul. But the most revealing figure is the 42 percent didn’t know, refused to answer or chose “none” or “other.”
In the same poll, when asked about which candidate’s religious beliefs are closest to their own, a combined 63 percent of respondents didn’t know, refused to answer or chose “none” or “other.” Only 7 percent said Romney.
Again, this may not necessarily be a hindrance as much as it has the potential to be an asset.
In a recent CNN/ORC International poll, 80 percent of Americans said Mormonism wasn’t a factor in electing a president.
The Romney campaign has reason to celebrate the findings of this and other surveys.
Though 36 percent of Americans do not believe Mormonism is a Christian religion, a majority (52 percent) don’t actually know that Romney is Mormon.
Late 2010 and early 2011 presidential polls consistently showed that a generic, nameless, faceless Republican candidate was more popular than President Obama, but when poll respondents were asked to pick between specific Republican candidates, Obama had a clear advantage.
Could the same theory apply to Romney and Mormonism?
If a majority doesn’t know that Romney is a Mormon, then a majority is viewing this question more as a survey of religious tolerance in America than as a survey of the country’s sentiments toward Romney specifically. It is a generic question about a generic Mormon candidate in a hypothetical scenario, and few will be inclined to answer yes, they are intolerant of other, “non-Christian” religions.
A Gallup poll over the summer showed that one in five Americans would not vote for a Mormon candidate. That is fairly consistent with the 17 percent in the CNN/ORC International poll who said they would be less likely to vote for a Mormon candidate.
When nearly a fifth of the electorate is willing to cast him out regardless of his views on domestic policy, his plans for the economy, or his ideas about tax reform, Romney is smart not to mention his faith during the debates or to include anything whatsoever about Mormonism in the biography on his website.
We unfortunately don’t live in a country whose voters are adequately educated about or even terribly interested in the differences between The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the more publicized, more scandalized Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Unless Romney can find a big enough microphone – an American Idol-sized microphone – to explain to the American people that he is not in a cult, that he is not a polygamist, and that regular, everyday Mormons actually don’t marry their teenaged cousins, he’s better off doing what he’s doing now: ignoring the issue.
Perhaps he learned a lesson from his 2008 presidential bid, when he publicly acknowledged his faith in a speech aimed at voters who were skeptical about Mormonism. As evidenced by his third-place finish in that primary, the speech wasn’t nearly as effective as the Romney camp might have hoped.
“A 2007 Pew poll showed that 41 percent of white evangelicals who went to church weekly said they would be less likely to vote for a Mormon,” The Christian Post wrote recently. “John Green, a Pew analyst and expert in religion and politics at the University of Akron in Ohio, said in a February 2011 commentary that Mormonism continues to be among the least popular religions in America. White evangelical Protestants, he continued, view the faith’s doctrines with suspicion and its missionaries as ‘competitors.’ ”
See also: Romney's Victory-by-Default Strategy for 2012, Romney's Millions Are Bankrupting His Campaign and Unemployment Matters, but Romney is Still an Idiot