Are "Devout" Mormons More Common Inside Or Outside Of Utah?

Abstract

Bass challenges the stereotype that Utah Latter-day Saints are less religiously committed than those elsewhere. Using CES and Pew Religious Landscape Survey data, he finds devout LDS members are proportionally more common inside the Jello Belt, while cultural Mormons (low-attending self-identified members) cluster outside it.

Findings for Latter-day Saints

• Devout LDS are statistically significantly more common in Utah than outside it across multiple CES years.
• In recent years, cultural Mormons are ~50% more prevalent outside Utah than inside.
• Pew RLS includes ~500–600 self-identified Mormons across two measurement waves, used as a cross-check.
• Devout share declines both inside and outside Utah over time, but Utah's advantage persists.

Limitations in methodology

Substack blog analysis; "devout" and "cultural" categories are operationalized by attendance/prayer thresholds that other analysts might set differently; LDS subsamples in CES/Pew remain small.

Related studies

• 2026DemographicsMigration

  Mormons Move: Mobility Data and Latter-day Saints in the GSS

  Alex Bass

• 2025PoliticsPRRI

  Do Church Goers Want To Hear More Politics From the Pews?

  Ryan Burge

• 2025

Cite this study

Bass, A. (2025). Are "Devout" Mormons More Common Inside Or Outside Of Utah?. Mormon Metrics (Substack). https://mormonmetrics.com/p/are-devout-mormons-more-common-inside

Alex Bass. "Are "Devout" Mormons More Common Inside Or Outside Of Utah?." Mormon Metrics (Substack), 2025. https://mormonmetrics.com/p/are-devout-mormons-more-common-inside.

@article{bass_2025_devout_mormons_inside_outside_utah,
  title = {Are "Devout" Mormons More Common Inside Or Outside Of Utah?},
  author = {Alex Bass},
  year = {2025},
  journal = {Mormon Metrics (Substack)},
  url = {https://mormonmetrics.com/p/are-devout-mormons-more-common-inside},
}