Ex-Mormons Are the Most Republican Religious Leavers in America

Abstract

A secondary analysis of Pew's 2014 and 2024 Religious Landscape Studies examining political party identification among people who left the religion they were raised in. The analysis finds that disaffiliated Latter-day Saints are the only major religious leaver group in which Republicans outnumber Democrats — and that ex-Mormon Republican identification grew from 32% to 41% between the two survey waves, challenging the common perception that ex-Mormons are predominantly progressive.

Findings for Latter-day Saints

• Among ex-Mormons, 41% identify as Republican and 37% as Democrat (Pew RLS 2024, n=316 disaffiliated; leaners folded into their party).
• Ex-Mormons are the only major religious tradition in America where Republicans outnumber Democrats among religious leavers.
• Ex-Mormon Republican identification increased from 32% (2014) to 41% (2024); the author notes this shift alone lacks statistical significance but is analytically consistent.
• For comparison, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Orthodox Christian, Protestant, and Catholic leavers all lean Democratic by wide margins (49–64% Democratic).
• The visible ex-Mormon community (podcasters, memoirists) skews progressive, creating availability bias that obscures the broader partisan distribution of those who leave.

Limitations in methodology

Small ex-Mormon sample (n=316 disaffiliated); the author explicitly flags that the 2014-to-2024 partisan shifts are not statistically significant in isolation. Leaners folded into their party, which reduces the Independent share and may overstate partisan polarization. Pew RLS is a cross-sectional survey, so it cannot determine whether political identity changed before or after disaffiliation.

Related studies

• 2026DisaffiliationSurvey

  Torn: Why People We Love Are Leaving the Church and What We Can Learn from Them

  Jeff Strong

• 2025DemographicsRetention

  BYU Latter-day Saint Religious Seismology Survey

  BYU College of Religious Education

Cite this study

Bass, A. (2026). Ex-Mormons Are the Most Republican Religious Leavers in America. Mormon Metrics (Substack). https://mormonmetrics.com/p/ex-mormons-are-the-most-republican

Alex Bass. "Ex-Mormons Are the Most Republican Religious Leavers in America." Mormon Metrics (Substack), 2026. https://mormonmetrics.com/p/ex-mormons-are-the-most-republican.

@article{mormon_metrics_ex_mormon_political_affiliation_2026,
  title = {Ex-Mormons Are the Most Republican Religious Leavers in America},
  author = {Alex Bass},
  year = {2026},
  journal = {Mormon Metrics (Substack)},
  url = {https://mormonmetrics.com/p/ex-mormons-are-the-most-republican},
}