Jana Riess: Over Half of U.S. Mormons Approve of Trump, but Age and Gender Divides Are Very Sharp

President Trump speaks in the East Room of the White House in Washington, May 18, 2018. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File)

On Monday, the Pew Research Center released its most recent findings about Donald Trump’s approval rating among various U.S. religious groups.

The highest support comes from white evangelical Protestants, 69% of whom approve of the job Trump is doing. This represents a decline from evangelicals’ previous approval rating of 78%, but is more than a two-thirds majority.

Among Mormons, another group that has long supported Republican candidates and presidents, Trump’s overall approval rating was lower—52%—but still in majority territory. A strong plurality of 39% of Latter-day Saints disapprove of Trump, and 10% say they have no opinion.

Gregory A. Smith, Pew’s Associate Director of Research, says that when Pew aggregates all 11 approval surveys it has conducted since Trump became president (n = 316 Mormons, with a margin of error of +/- 6.5%), several interesting trends emerge.

1. Mormon men are “significantly more approving of Trump’s job performance than [Mormon] women.”

	Men	Women
Approve of Trump	63%	42%
Disapprove of Trump	32%	45%
No opinion	5%	14%

There is a 21-point spread between men who approve of Trump (63%) and women who do (just 42%). Among Latter-day Saint women, a slightly higher percentage actually disapprove of Trump than approve of him. Mormon men, on the other hand, approve of the president by a margin of nearly two to one.

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Source: Religion News Service