A growing number of Latter-day Saints women in Gilbert, Arizona, are refusing to vote for a scandal-plagued Republican candidate, breaking with a voting bloc that has delivered reliable Republican margins in the Phoenix suburbs for decades.
The defections center on a candidate whose conduct has collided with the moral teachings of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which counts roughly 450,000 members in Arizona. One Gilbert resident told NPR she had always considered herself conservative but found herself in a political identity crisis, unable to bring herself to support the candidate.
Arizona has become a focal point for the shift. The state's 11 electoral votes went to Joe Biden in 2020 by just 10,457 votes, and Latter-day Saints voters — concentrated in Mesa, Gilbert and Chandler — made up a meaningful share of that margin. Roughly 6% of Arizona adults identify as Latter-day Saints, according to the Pew Research Center, and they turn out to vote at higher rates than the general population.
Latter-day Saints women in particular have moved away from Republican candidates in recent cycles. In 2020, a Deseret News/Hinckley Institute poll found that 39% of Latter-day Saints women in Arizona backed Biden, compared with 27% of Latter-day Saints men. Church leadership has also shifted its tone: the faith's general conference has emphasized compassion for immigrants and refugees, and in 2023 the church endorsed a bipartisan immigration framework that many Republican candidates opposed.
The candidate's scandals add a specific trigger. Latter-day Saints theology places heavy weight on personal integrity and family conduct, and church members who once voted Republican on abortion and religious liberty grounds now say those issues do not outweigh character concerns.
"I couldn't vote for someone whose behavior I would not accept in my own ward," the Gilbert resident said, referring to a local church congregation.
The shift matters beyond Arizona. Latter-day Saints voters are a decisive bloc in Utah, Idaho and Nevada, and Republican strategists have watched their margins among the group narrow since 2016. In 2020, Trump won Utah by 20 points — down from 45 points in 2012 — and support among Latter-day Saints women was a key driver of that decline.
Democrats have courted the opening. Arizona Senate candidate Ruben Gallego has run ads in the Phoenix suburbs highlighting his military service and his family's working-class background, while Republican operatives have poured money into church-adjacent outreach in Mesa and Gilbert.
Whether the defections translate into votes on Election Day is uncertain, but the women interviewed by NPR described their decision as settled. "My faith comes first," the Gilbert resident said. "The party does not."
