The Atlantic's McKay Coppins on the LDS Church and a second Trump term | Episode 365

Like most Americans in the buildup to the 2024 election, members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints found themselves caught up in the polarizing tug-of-war over who should be the next president of the United States.

Four years ago, a number of Latter-day Saints, for decades a reliably Republican voting bloc, had bucked Donald Trump and backed Joe Biden, helping to deliver a crucial battleground state, Arizona, for the Democrat.

Those forces were at play again this time around in Arizona and neighboring Nevada for Kamala Harris, with the Trump campaign courting Latter-day Saints as well.

In the end, the nail-biter results pundits had predicted for months never materialized. Trump won the Electoral College count by a comfortable margin and even captured the popular vote.

Early exit polls have shown Latter-day Saints again overwhelmingly stuck with Trump, though his support among these voters may have slipped since 2020. That could be significant, given that the former president’s margins improved among many other constituencies.

So, what happened? What does the election say about the partisan breakdown among Latter-day Saints in the pews? And what might a second Trump administration mean for the church and its members?

On this week’s podcast, McKay Coppins, an award-winning Latter-day Saint journalist who covers national politics for The Atlantic, helps to answer those questions and more.

Coppins is the author of “The Wilderness,” exploring the GOP’s post-2012 drive to win back the White House, and, more recently, “Romney: A Reckoning,” a biography of Utah Sen. Mitt Romney, the Latter-day Saint politician who famously became one of the most visible and vocal anti-Trump Republicans.