I asked 400 of my former BYU students who they plan to vote for in 2020. Their answers will surprise you.
BYU-educated Millennial voters, mostly LDS (Mormon), roundly rejected Trump in 2016. Millennial and Gen Z LDS opposition to Trump may have only increased in 2020.
In 2016, 6 in 10 U.S. LDS Millennials voted against Trump (CCES 2016); in Utah, 2 in 3 college-educated Utah LDS Millennials voted against Trump (Utah Exit Poll). Over three-quarters of BYU-educated voters I surveyed said they will not vote for Trump (results weighted by gender and party registration). The current vote intentions of college-educated young adults, along with women and previously GOP-leaning moderates, explain why Utah was recently polled as an unbelievably narrow race.
While Utah is unlikely to go blue in the 2020 election, not a single young BYU-educated sub-group I surveyed (% for Trump)—not men (33%), not whites (23%), not older Millennials (26%), not even Republicans (49%)—evince majority support for Trump in 2020.
One huge X factor remains: Of the 1 in 3 BYU-educated voters and young Utah voters who voted for Never-Trump independent LDS 2016 candidate Evan McMullin, who will they vote for in 2020? McMullin endorsed the cause of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2016, and his organization launched a cross-partisan coalition last month to vote for a new president. At the end of this essay, I offer three possible scenarios based on my survey results and the best existing data sources for what could happen in Utah this fall — and why it matters to our nation’s racial predicament. After Mitt Romney’s historic impeachment vote and the current crises made worse by a faithless president, LDS voter opposition to Trump may not only rise, but also grow more intense. Will young LDS voters unify against Trump or fracture their opposition again?
Our Nation on the Brink: What Will Voters Choose?
Last Saturday I participated in one of the many peaceful, multiracial protests sweeping the nation, from college towns like mine to the large cities, to condemn the unconstitutional and racist killings of Black Americans George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and countless others, as one vehicle at the protest ingeniously and painstakingly reminded all of us:
Today’s culmination of righteous indignation born of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2012 is in many ways unique to our specific moment, including the new ways some have exemplified how ally is a verb, not just a noun. Today’s marches, vigils, and even the clashes, however, also echo the interreligious, interracial solidarity in Selma in 1965 (“VOTE”), and the international unity of immigrants and native born US citizens in Los Angeles and across America in 2006 (“Today We March, Tomorrow We Vote”). Protestors today declare similarly: “We protest today. We vote in November.”
But what will they vote for? For a new president, yes. But also, a growing chorus contends, voters must elect officials at every level who go beyond gestures, even sympathy, and act to overturn decades of discriminatory laws, policies, and practices, that have brought our nation, once again, to the brink.
As Ibram Kendi powerfully argues, we can only pursue anti-racist change or slip back, yet again, to the racist status quo. There is no middle ground. While Joe Biden embodies part change and part status quo, Black voters in South Carolina led Democratic voters to pick Biden as the most likely to beat Trump.
May 2020 Survey of Former BYU Students
Two weeks prior to our traumatic national “return to normal” of extrajudicial police and citizen killings of Black people, including, but not limited to, the awful murder of George Floyd, I invited over 1,500 of my former BYU students since 2012 to take a short online anonymous survey. While the invitation predated recent protests, the context was still amid the post-lockdown phase of a COVID-19 pandemic that has disproportionately killed Black Americans.
The online survey asked the following questions:
- Are you registered to vote?
- How old are you?
- For whom did you vote in 2016? (eligible voters age 21+ only)
- For whom would you vote if the 2020 election were today? (eligible voters only, incl. likely voter screen)
- What is your gender?
- How do you self-identify? (Multiple response permitted: Asian, Black, Latina/o, Middle Eastern, Native American, Pacific Islander, or White)
- In which state are you registered to vote? (registered voters)
- Last, what is your current party registration? (registered voters)
From May 15–22, 2020, 398 students responded, for a response rate of 26%, including 325 registered voters who said they would vote in 2020. Over 9 in 10 of the students surveyed took a general education sociology course with no prerequisites; they represent all BYU college majors and most U.S. states.
While the sample is racially representative, results are weighted to better reflect the BYU student population (nearly all LDS/Mormon) by gender and party registration. The weights are informed by the Cooperative Congressional Election Study (CCES), the Utah Exit Poll, Pew Research Center estimates, and representative data from Jana Riess’s brilliant 2019 book, The Next Mormons: How Millennials Are Changing the LDS Church. The margin of error (n=325) is +/- 5 percentage points.
(See: full results of my survey, including weighted vs. unweighted party registration data.)
Results: Recent BYU Students Reject Trump in 2020
Were the election held today, only 22% of all recent BYU-educated likely voters surveyed said that they would vote for Donald Trump; 52% would vote for Joe Biden, and 26% remain undecided.
Note: Weighted by gender and party registration. Margin of error = +/- 5% for all likely voters
(n=325 current & graduated BYU student registered voters ages 18–39).
A remarkable gender divide emerges. Men are nearly 3 times as likely as women to vote for Trump, although more men may still vote for Biden over Trump. While 33% of men would vote for Trump and 40% for Biden (within the margin of error), only 12% of women would vote for Trump, and 62% would vote for Biden, a statistically significant advantage for Biden.
Democrats United Against Trump, Republicans Appear Divided
When we examine the survey results by party registration, the results are at once unsurprising and also shocking in our era of hyper-partisan polarization.
One the one hand, the Democratic unity of negative partisanship comes as no surprise: 91% of Democrats intend to vote for Biden, not one Democratic voter said they would vote for Trump, and 9% remain undecided.
Note: Weighted by gender and party registration (n=325 registered voters ages 18–39). Exactly 2 of 325 respondents indicated a left-party registration (Green, DSA) and were grouped with Democrats, 5 affiliated with the United Utah party and were placed with independent or unaffiliated voters, and 1 voter was registered as a Libertarian and grouped with the Republicans.
On the other hand, the dramatic lack of backing by these college-educated Republicans is astounding and highlights how the polarization of these mostly LDS voters is assymetrical in the age of Trump. Only 49% of registered Republicans plan to vote for Trump.
Granted, only 15% of Republicans say they will vote for Biden, so it is likely that partisan voters will gravitate back to the president, but 36% of Republicans remain undecided, and, perhaps, unable to make a final decision. This split gives shows how a sizeable share of young BYU Republican voters may yet follow other BYU-educated Never Trump Republicans like Jeff Flake, Evan McMullin, and Mitt Romney. Or they might not.
Independent and unaffiliated party voters are the largest party sub-group. LDS independents typically tilt Republican in other samples, including Pew estimates. However, while independents I surveyed may be former Republicans and likely often have parents who are Republicans, they lean unmistakably towards Biden, 62%, vs. 10% for Trump and 28% undecided.
An age gap is evident even among these Gen Z & Millennial voters. Only 18% of voters age 18–24 pick Trump vs. 26% of voters age 25–39. While statistically similar shares (53% vs. 50%) say they would vote for Biden, the older group is slightly more likely to have already made up their minds.
Note: Weighted by gender and party registration (n=325 registered voters ages 18–39)
Many voters age 18–24 in 2020 are voting for the first time and even those age 22–24 certainly never voted before 2016. This cohort has come of age during the rise, election of Trump, and division today. Only 18% say they will vote for Trump in 2020.
While age 18–24 vs. age 25–39 categorization I employ does not exactly map onto the generational divides (youngest Millennials are age 24 — see May 2020 Pew report), it does offer us one possible distinction between college-going (age 18–24) vs. likely college grad (age 25+) voters (many LDS BYU students, increasingly women, take up to two years to complete a religious proselyting mission). While it is difficult to disentangle the effects of age, period, and cohort, research shows that the effect of birth year via early vote choices during historic times like the presidencies of FDR or Reagan have long-lasting, often permanent, effects on vote choices for the rest of voters’ lives. In short, it is safe to assume that some of the differences we see in Millienial/Gen Z vs. older BYU-educated, mostly LDS, voters may last a lifetime. The priority alignment and potential party alignment of these BYU voters who have come of age under Trump appears to be underway.
Differences by Race Magnified by Gender Divide
About 4 in 5 respondents self-identify as non-Hispanic white, reflecting BYU as a historically white university (81% white, down from 87% white in 2002). Today, there are over 5,000 students of color at BYU.
Since 2002, Black and Latino enrollment at BYU has tripled. BYU has become more diverse as it has become more selective, which explodes stereotypes about Black students in particular and students of color in general.
If recent trends since 2009 continue, a simplified linear extrapolation (other factors will surely either slow or accelerate that growth), there could be as many as 9,000 students of color at BYU by 2030. Based on first-year student enrollment trends, there will be 3,000 Latino students at BYU by 2022.
So, while the sample size of voters of color below is smaller and the margins of error are larger, differences by race matter today and especially going forward as the youngest LDS generation is the most diverse.
Only 11% of BYU-educated Voters of Color Plan to Vote for Trump
Note: Weighted by gender and party registration (n=325 registered voters ages 18–39)
Among young BYU-educated likely voters, 23% of white voters plan to vote for Trump, vs. 11% of voters of color. While white voters remain split on Biden (50%), 64% of voters of color plan to vote for Trump’s Democratic challenger. Only 9% of Latino voters plan to vote for Trump and 64% say they will vote for Biden (full results).
The gender divide outweighs the race divide. As intersectionality implies, the experience of women of color, especially Black and Latina women, is multiplied, not just stacked, by their double-minority status in society and LDS culture. Only 4% of BYU women of color, mostly LDS, plan to vote for Trump. This finding alone dispels any potential misperceptions about LDS women of color, underscoring how they are at once Black, Mormon, and female, not separate identities.
Note: Weighted by gender and party registration (n=325 registered voters ages 18–39)
Gender plays a powerful role in shaping Gen Z & Millennial BYU grads: Only 14% of white women and just 4% of women of color say they would vote for Trump, compared to 34% of white men and 24% of men of color, though the sample size is smallest for men of color.
One potential explanation is that BYU majors are stratified more by gender than race such that women overall are more amenable to a more activist government intervention for past public investments in racism that they learn about in their curriculum, like redlining of communities of color and racialized immigration policies. While women are more likely to select into courses that teach a complete racial history, they may also be more likely to translate the impact into vote choice, especially women of color.
In summary, among 20 sub-groups analyzed, only a majority of Republican voters age 25–39 reported a majority vote (and just barely, 51%), for Trump. Across the other 19 of 20 sub-groups, none reached a majority vote for Trump.
BYU Voters in 2016 vs. 2020
Next, I turn to some unique added value of my survey. What are the 2020 vote intentions of BYU-educated (mostly LDS) voters who voted in 2016? How does Trump support compare to 2020? Perhaps more important, who will 2016 McMullin voters choose?
What are the 2020 vote choices of eligible voters old enough to have voted and who participated in the 2016 election? While recalling vote choice is not perfect, it is superior to not having these rare data for such a small sub-population in the U.S. as college-educated young LDS voters.
As the graph below shows, 31% voted for Trump in 2016 and only 25% plan to vote for Trump in 2020. While the decline overlaps with the margin of error (+/- 6 percentage points), it offers another clue that support for Trump among previous voters has certainly not increased since 2016. While 32% of voters surveyed recall voting for Hillary Clinton, 49% of the same voters plan to vote for 2020 Democratic counterpart Joe Biden.
Note: Weighted by gender and party registration (n=228 voters age 21+ who voted in 2016)
About 26% of those BYU-educated respondents who voted in 2016 cast their ballot for Evan McMullin, 7% for Gary Johnson, and 4% for others, a remarkable 36% in total to third-party candidates.
That’s quite a few votes up for grabs in 2020.
McMullin rarely wastes an opportunity among his roughly 491,000 followers on Twitter to draw distinctions between him and Trump.
Below are the 2020 vote choices broken down by who the respondent voted for in 2016, including those who were eligible and old enough to vote, but did not vote (the largest category).
Note: Weighted by gender and party registration (n=352 eligible voters age 21+); 6% voted for other candidates.
Among BYU-educated 2016 voters, I find that Trump is holding on to 61% of his previous voters in 2020; Biden gets 87% of Clinton voters, 41% of McMullin voters, and 56% of those who didn’t vote in 2016, but were old enough and eligible to vote. About 45% of McMullin voters and 32% of Trump voters still remain undecided.
So many undecided voters may be an artifact of the coronavirus pandemic derailing what would otherwise be wall-to-wall campaign coverage. It may also be an indicator that Republican-leaning young BYU-educated, mostly LDS, voters may sill remain conflicted even after 3 years of a Trump presidency, cross-pressured by Republican partisan loyalty on the one hand, and prominent Trump defections (e.g., Romney) as well as the growing effect of college education and the effect of that social class status on vote choice.
As the Pew Research Center reports, another possibility is that the Gen Z (age 18–23) Republican-leaning voters voters in my sample are in fact more racially liberal compared to older Republicans and less likely to vote for Trump, but not other Republicans, which is supported by other data.
Most BYU grads are LDS, but Not All Reliable Republicans
As Daniel Cox of the American Enterprise Institute has reported, in 2016, LDS/Mormon voters broke with white Evangelicals as the LDS Republican vote share plummeted from 78% to 61% (ANES) or 54% (CCES-see below).
The latest Pew data show that 52% of LDS/Mormon voters (all races) approve of Trump, putting them closer to White Mainline Protestants (48%) and White Catholics (44%) than White Evangelicals (68%).
Using a larger sample size in the CCES 2016 data, 54% of LDS voters in 2016 reported voting for Trump. Rarely reported, I computed the difference among LDS voters by race, again using CCES survey weights, and find that 56% of white LDS voters voted for Trump, 18% for Clinton, and 26% for other candidates, including 14% for McMullin. In stark contrast, only 34% of LDS voters of color cast their ballot for Trump, 52% for Clinton, 14% for other candidates — only 3% for McMullin.
Race and generation shape vote choices and LDS (Mormon) voters are no exception: In 2016, 56% of white LDS voters cast a ballot for Trump, compared to 34% of LDS voters of color. While 58% of LDS voters over age 35 in 2016 voted for Trump, only 40% of Millennials 35 or younger voted for him.
Although the CCES is the largest dataset I could find, there are not enough Utah LDS McMullin voters or Utah LDS Millennial voters to break out these results just for Utah, but the McMullin vote share would likely be higher since he appeared on the ballot in 10 states, including Utah.
Survey Results: BYU-educated Voters in Utah in 2016 vs. 2020
When we focus the likely voters registered in Utah (n=190), we can start to explore the external validity of my survey data and make informed inferences about scenarios for 2020. (Note: Just because 57% of my sample is currently registered in Utah does not mean all these voters are originally from Utah. Only 32% of all BYU students are from Utah.)
My focus has been on the overall vote share for Trump. The Utah Exit Poll largely confirms my findings: Among 2,395 Utah LDS voters either in college (age 18–24) or college grads (age 25–29) in 2016, the Utah Exit Poll shows that 33% voted for Trump, compared to 29% in my sample of 190 registered Utah voters, well within the margin of error and therefore not a statistically different. Support for Clinton in my sample was slightly higher, and McMullin support, slightly lower, but statistically comparable given my sample size.
Source (right): Utah 2016 Exit Poll, LDS voters subset: Age 18–24 in college & age 25–29 with college degree
The biggest X factor in Utah in 2020? The McMullin factor: How will the large chunk of young, college-educated voters age 21–35 who voted for Evan McMullin in 2016 vote in a two-way race between Joe Biden and Donald Trump in 2020? These McMullin voters were anywhere from roughly 34% of Utah voters (per my survey includes 190 voters registered in Utah) to 44% (per BYU Exit Poll of 2,695 LDS college-going/grad Utah voters age 18–29 in 2016).
Provo, Utah was Evan McMullin’s national stronghold in 2016 (see map below). Every precinct surrounding BYU campus, and others in central Provo shaded in green, gave plurality or majority support for McMullin. This exception pattern was similar, although less pronounced, around other campuses like Utah State University in northern Utah.
These 2016 Utah results lead to the final question: What will happen in November 2020?
Three 2020 Scenarios for Utah: (1) Red State, (2) Closer than Expected, or (3) Sudden Swing State?
Let’s wrap up this analysis by pointing to three possible scenarios:
- Scenario 1: Red State — Utah resumes the Republican vote advantage pre-Trump 2016 (low of 45.5%) and pre-Romney 2012 (high of 72.6%). For reference, John McCain defeated an Obama-Biden ticket 62–34 during the 2008 financial crisis. In this scenario, Trump defeats Biden 60–36 as undecided Republicans break towards Trump in the ensuing months, joined by most Republican-leaning independents, who don’t appear to currently support Trump as much, but also don’t have the McMullin protest vote option in 2020 like they did in 2016. This scenario merits no further comment other than to note it is not supported by 2016-2018 election returns, only by pre-2016/Trump trends, including 2008 crisis.
- Scenario 2: Closer than Expected — Utah ends up far closer than expected, defined as 8-12 point race, tighter than the current average of very sparse polling. Under this scenario, McMullin 2016 voters break close about even or 60/40 for Biden over Trump and Trump wins 54–42. Not a swing state, but another giant step away from Trump that began in 2016.
Like Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Washington, and now California in 2020, Utah moved to mail-in elections in 2018 along with same-day voter registration at voting ballot drop-off centers. In the March 3rd Utah presidential primary, 38% of votes were cast for Democratic contenders combined and 54% of votes were cast for Trump, giving an initial estimate among the most motivated partisans. These election returns say little, however, about unaffiliated voters who did not participate in the primaries, including in particular those who voted for McMullin in 2016.
Below I array the split in 2016 McMullin voters between Biden-Trump from left to right. For example, in the 60/40 Biden column, if 60% of McMullin voters choose Biden in 2020, and 40% choose Trump, that would boost Biden by about +13 points over Clinton’s vote share in 2016 (28%) and Trump, by nearly +9 points over his 2016 vote share (45.5%, recall he won Utah with less than half the vote because Never Trump opposition split among Clinton and McMullin). If we assume, for the sake of simplicity, that third party votes reverts back to their historical norm of 4% or less, then Biden would earn close to 42% of the vote to Trump’s 54%, or the type of 54–42 split envisioned under Scenario 2. A close race, but not a competitive swing state.
(Note: Obama-Biden presidential ticket won 34% of Utah vote in 2008)
- Scenario 3: Sudden Swing State — Utah becomes a swing state, in 2020, at least. Trump wins 50–46 over Biden, for example. Should Biden win, as would be expected if Utah came that close, Utah’s swing status would likely be short-lived, though Republican domination may continue to wane as it has in the rest of the Southwest and the Sunbelt.
The only way Utah becomes a swing state is if enough Republicans cross over to vote for Biden.
(1) First, the 2016 McMullin vote must break at least 75% to 80% or more for Biden in 2020. As shown in the table above, if 80% break for Biden and 20% for Trump, the outcome may likely be Trump edging out a Biden 50–46. As mentioned, McMullin supports Black Lives Matter, the current protests, and has officially put the resources of his organization behind electing anyone but Trump, i.e., Joe Biden.
Undecided, younger voters who favored McMullin in 2016 would have to turn out in higher numbers. This prospect is supported by their surge in turnout in 2018 and the universal institution of mail-in voting and in-person same-day registration for those previously disengaged voters, who I find in my survey would overwhelmingly support Biden. If McMullin and his former voter base can break through social media to persuade those in their networks that they crossing partisan lines to vote out Trump, this scenario becomes more likely.
After the protest supporting George Floyd in Provo last week, one prior McMullin supporter who voted as an Independent in the 2020 open Democratic presidential primary shared with me that racial justice should not be a partisan issue, but a moral one that people of all parties can support.
(2) Second, to become a sudden swing state, the race would need to tighten, which it may or may not have done in Utah. According to the average of 5 statewide polls taken in 2020, Trump leads Biden by about 12 points in Utah. However, in late May a poll of 1,078 likely 2020 voters showed a race too close to call, Trump 44% to Biden 41%.
The poll reported Trump leading with men but trailing among women and badly (Biden 55%–Trump 19%) among more moderate voters who are either true independents or lean toward one of the major parties.
If disillusioned Republican-leaning voters, especially McMullin supporters, see that their vote matters, they may be more likely to cast a ballot against Trump rather than sit out the election. (A tight race, alternatively, may also inspire more of Trump’s base to turn out, too.)
(3) Last, but perhaps most symbolically important in the wake of national protests over the the lynching and killing of Black people in 2020, LDS voters would need to dial up the intensity of opposition to Trump. They would need to dig deeper to shake off tradition and fight for the movement for Black lives. They would start to lead out in opposition to racism in their own communities. They would not simply follow or lag behind today’s multiracial, nationwide Civil Rights uprising to defend the constitutional and human right of Black Americans to live, to life itself.
As Harvard Divinity School Ph.D. candidate and Black American LDS woman Janan Graham-Russell argues, LDS voters would wrestle with how deeply embedded whiteness remains in the history and culture of the LDS faith and at BYU, as LDS Chicano Rights activist and BYU History Professor Ignacio García argues. Most important, LDS voters would come to understand that Trump is not an aberration, but a culminating symptom of racism, from slavery to today’s killings and racialized immigration policies.
Has LDS opposition to Trump grown? And is it more intense?
The apparent stability of overall approval of Trump among LDS voters — 52% in 2017 vs. 51% in 2019 — conceals one important trend about potential LDS anti-trump intensity: Strong disapproval of Trump increased from 21% in 2017 to 33% in 2019. It may have risen more in 2020.
Thus, per to the best panel data I could find, Trump does not appear to have picked up any new LDS voter support whatsoever, only new opposition.
These latest data still lag a year behind LDS Senator Mitt Romney’s historic impeachment vote in February 2020 that made him the first-ever U.S. Senator to vote to convict a president of his same party. His vote of integrity may (or may not) embolden more younger Republicans to vote against Trump in 2020.
As Romney’s courageous vote to impeach showed, principled taking of sides against Trump need not be partisan. Likewise, Trump’s election lit a fire of moral indignation for Sharlee Mullins Glenn, a lifelong LDS Republican:
I became increasingly concerned during the 2016 election cycle when a man who built his candidacy on a platform of fear — of immigrants, Muslims, refugees and others — inexplicably became not only the nominee of the party I had belonged to my entire life, but also president. This was a man who proclaimed, “Real power is, I don’t even want to use the word, fear.”
With Donald Trump’s election, I knew I could not remain silent. I in no way considered myself an activist. But in January 2017, just after the inauguration, I opened my computer and worked late into the night setting up a nonpartisan Facebook group for myself and a few like-minded friends. I wanted to create a space where we could discuss ways in which we might join forces to counterbalance the fear and to call for decency, compassion and ethics in our government. We called ourselves Mormon Women for Ethical Government.
Mormon Women for Ethical Government (MWEG) is a nonpartisan organization that regularly and thoughtfully rebukes unethical policies of the current administration and counts on perhaps as many as 10,000 networked and effective members, all women, but not all LDS/Mormon — interfaith collaboration is welcome and frequently practiced. MWEG has gotten the attention of Democrats like U.S. Senator Cory Booker and Republicans like U.S. Senator Mitt Romney.
This transformation is akin to what Ibram Kendi and forerunners like Angela Davis call the difference between striving to be “not racist” versus anti-racist. In order to fight racism, sexism, or nativism, one must be actively engaged in dismantling these systems of oppression, not merely a bystander who claims they were not the one to banish children from asylum at the border, commit sexual assault, or injure peaceful protesters.
Final Reflections: Donzaleigh Abernathy, Bryan Stevenson, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Mitt Romney, George Romney, and Mehrsa Baradaran
When Donzaleigh Abernathy, daughter of Civil Rights hero Reverend Ralph Abernathy, recently visited BYU days after Romney’s historic February impeachment vote, she told a group of Black LDS women over lunch, “Thank God for Mitt Romney.” Notwithstanding other partisan or policy differences, when someone with Romney’s stature not only casts a historic vote against Trump, but delivers a compelling speech about why, LDS and non-LDS voters should take note that principled opposition to Trump is not only possible, but a moral imperative.
Abernathy was not alone. In 2018, Bryan Stevenson, founder of the Equal Justice Initiative and author of the book Just Mercy, shook a record-size BYU audience and awoke them to the need to create justice, not just wait for it to happen. Stevenson uplifted all of us without mentioning a single political party or elected official’s name.
In response to a profound question about symbols, names, and BYU buildings by Melodie Jackson, Black American BYU graduate and current Ph.D. candidate at the University of Maryland, Stevenson reflected back to us, “Who do we honor?” He counseled us all to excavate the racist past of our university; he assured us that we would also find the anti-racists whose names we never knew.
In 2019, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., the famed historian, filmmaker, and Harvard professor of African American studies also gave a BYU forum address. Gates did not hesitate to call out the racism of Trump and to name him several times as he compared today’s times to the violent Jim Crow response that extinguished our nation’s second founding, Reconstruction. Gates skillfully built up to this climatic point of his argument, and playfully assured his audience of his mutual relationship with his “good friend, Mitt Romney.”
For Utah to a sudden swing state in 2020 that could reasonably reject Trump, Mitt Romney would need to endorse Biden and invoke the legacy of his father, George Romney, who was also an LDS Republican candidate for president in 1968. Romney has little to nothing to lose politically, occupying a safe Senate seat until 2024.
George Romney was a northern liberal Republican who went beyond quelling protests in Detroit as governor of Michigan — he truly understood that racial segregation and discrimination were institutional problems created by white suburbs that “built a high-income white noose” around black inner cities. Institutional racism required institutional anti-racist solutions like racial integration and equitable funding for housing, schools, and infrastructure.
Although unknown to most LDS voters, Pulitzer-prize winning New York Times journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones excavated George Romney’s anti-racist legacy in a brilliant This American Life podcast episode. Housing scholar Richard Rothstein has consistently emphasized how Romney was the rare public leader who summoned the courage and audacity to withhold funding from suburbs that refused to integrate.
Law professor, award-winning author, and Iranian-American expert on the racial history of banking Mehrsa Baradaran also writes and speaks of the remarkable legacy of George Romney in her book, The Color of Money: Black Banks and the Racial Wealth Gap. Here is what Baradaran had to say about Mitt Romney’s vote against Trump in the context of his father’s legacy: “George stood against his party’s turn toward racism and the Southern Strategy… I think today, George would have been very proud of his son.
One last thing about Professor Baradaran — she’s also LDS and a progressive voice for reform, from postal banking to reparations — one of my role models.
She is a BYU graduate, too.
I invite you to finish her book before election day, to understand how our nation’s divestment in Black people, Black banks, and Black communities has led us to our present breaking point. The election can’t come soon enough. Our multiracial democracy hangs in the balance.
-Jacob S. Rugh Twitter: @JakeRugh
- My research on housing discrimination, foreclosure, voting, Black homeownership and elections, DACA, and immigrant deportations has been used in Civil Rights cases and featured in The Atlantic, FiveThirtyEight, New York Times, NPR, and Journalist’s Resource.
Online Survey of BYU-educated voters (n=398), full survey results here:
P.S. Almost 1 in 6 of the recent BYU students I surveyed are registered to vote in the following 13 swing states (defined broadly): Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Georgia (none were registered in Iowa). Among voters registered across these 13 states, 26% intend to vote for Trump, 57% for Biden, with 17% undecided. About two-thirds are registered in the Sunbelt swing states of AZ, CO, FL, GA, NC, VA and 30% plan to vote for Trump. Among voters registered in the Northern swing states of MI, MN, NH, OH, PA, WI, 14% report that they will vote for Trump. Many have become 2020 swing voters in Arizona, where many BYU grads settle, where others also are rejecting Trumpism, and where roughly 5% of the population is LDS, nearly 3 times the US average.
Note: Weighted by gender and party registration (n=51 voters ages 18–39 registered in swing states here)
