Evangelicals' antipathy to Romney appears tied more to his liberal past than his Mormonism

Louisiana's presidential primary on Saturday continued the religious pattern in the Republican race: "In states where evangelicals make up more than 50 percent of the Republican electorate, Romney can’t win; in states where they make up less than 50 percent, he can’t lose," Steve Kornacki writes for Salon.

While most of GOP evangelicals' resistance to Romney is "tied directly to religion," Kornacki says, it may have less to do with his Mormon faith than "his culturally liberal past." He cites the research of Michael Tesler, an assistant professor of political science at Brown University, who argues that the resistance has little if anything to do with being anti-Mormon, and mainly with the degree of evangelicals' conservatism on "moral issues" such as abortion and gay marriage.

Before the primaries in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, Tesler looked at seven polls conducted by YouGov, and found that "Evangelical Republicans do not feel that much colder towards Mormons than their fellow partisans," but "are much more conservative on these issues than their fellow partisans," and are "more likely to vote in the primaries based upon moral issues than other Republicans." For Tesler's full analysis, with graphs, click here.