“I don’t understand how a LDS member can support someone who is immoral and has demonstrated their immorality from the moment they came to our attention,” said former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat and church member. … – he said in an interview.

Trump’s campaign hopes more Mormons have followed the path of Lee and right-wing radio host Glenn Beck, former critics who came to support Trump.

In 2016, Democrats did not seem to convert many of the Mormons who voted against Trump. Some stayed at home, while many others voted against conservative LDS side candidate Evan McMullin, who received 21 percent of the Utah vote. McMullin also got about 7 percent in neighboring Idaho, but his support in Arizona was negligible because he was not on the ballot and was only a registered candidate.

Without McMullin in the race and with a turnout expected to exceed 2016, both parties see a rare group of potentially convincing voters at a very flimsy time.

“Not having a third party ticket with Evan McMullin will help us get some of these voters into the Trump camp,” said McDaniel, Romney’s niece.

McMullin, who still opposes Trump, said he believed some of his supporters would vote for the president, but that “the majority of the people who voted for the third party in 2016 will support Biden in this election.” He claimed that some Republicans voted for Trump “out of habit,” but have since resented him.

A Biden spokesman acknowledged that Trump is likely to improve his Mormon performance in 2016, but the Democrat’s goal is to significantly limit those gains. Some longtime Democratic LDS organizers said Biden had already improved on Hillary Clinton’s efforts, which they said were too focused on Utah.

“The Biden campaign seems to be much more aware of the Latter-day Saint diaspora in the mountainous west and South Atlantic,” said Rob Taber, national co-chair of America’s Latter-day Saint movement.

“It won’t be shocking that Trump wins the Mormon vote, but if it’s 10-15 points below normal in Nevada and Arizona, that’s a big deal,” said Quinn Monson, a partner at Utah-based research firm Y2 Analytics. and professor of political science at Church-funded Brigham Young University. “This is tantamount to Republicans suddenly getting a quarter of the African American vote, and I really think it’s quite possible. They have not yet fully agreed with Donald Trump. “

So far, Trump’s campaign seems to be devoting more time to its candidates courting Mormon voters. While Pence is visiting Arizona, Biden or his partner Kamala Harris are not planning to participate in the Mormon-focused event. Biden’s advisers believe his Catholicism may also appeal to LDS voters, but the campaign does not broadcast advertisements in Arizona about his religion.

Trump is roughly 5 points behind Biden in Arizona, according to average polls, and SPD voters could be pivotal if the race gets tighter. In 2018, Kirsten Cinema won the major Maricopa county, which includes the historically Mormon suburb of Mesa, becoming the first Democrat to win a Senate seat in Arizona since the 1980s.

Trump campaign advisers say they don’t see Maricopa in County obligatory victory; instead, they want to increase the president’s profitability in rural Arizona. The LDS enclaves in the White Mountains will be key to this effort.

Trump’s public embrace by some LDS members has created rifts in a community that was once largely monolithic in politics. Former Arizona Senator Bob Worsley, a Republican and founder of SkyMall, recently started public organizing for Biden after he sensed the Trump LDS group that hosted Pence last month implied that Church leadership was supporting the president.

“I’ve never voted for Democrats in my life, but we think this man is an abomination,” Worsley said. He believes there will be more Mormons voting for Biden than in 2016, because “some thought Hillary Bill’s husband had a similar lack of an example of a good moral person.”

Church leaders, whose members closely monitor political signals, are trying to remain neutral in the race, even as they continue to resist Trump on immigration issues. In 2018, the church protested the administration’s policies that resulted in family separation at the border.

“We are deeply concerned about the aggressive and insensitive treatment of these families,” it said at the time.

Biden’s campaign hopes Trump’s reputation for immigration will push LDS voters, including many Hispanics who have joined the Church in recent years, to Democrats. The campaign is building an LDS volunteer program that engages church members who support Biden to connect with Mormon friends and neighbors.

“In the end, President Trump is more reflective of the political values ​​of most Mormons than Joe Biden,” said Mike Noble, partner and head of research at OH Predictive Insights, a Phoenix-based research firm. But Trump will be “wrong” if he thinks he has control over SPD voters, he added.

“Whether they can digest his erratic behavior,” Noble said, “will probably be the deciding factor for many Mormons.”