The widespread Mormon rejection of Donald Trump is this week’s big LDS news. Damon Linker writes in The Week:

With Donald Trump’s massive loss in Utah on Tuesday (with 85 percent of precincts reporting, the GOP’s national frontrunner has a meager 14 percent of the vote, coming in a distant third to Ted Cruz and John Kasich), Trump has finally met his match — the force in the Republican Party that can stop his populist juggernaut in its tracks.

The secret to bringing the demagogue to his knees? Mormons.

Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints make up nearly 63 percent of Utah’s population, while Idaho and Wyoming (where Trump lost by large margins in earlier contests) rank second and third, respectively, for states with highest proportion of Mormons.

That leaves just two problems with the Grand Plan to bring down Trump using Mormon Power: The LDS are a tiny minority in the rest of the country, and these three Mormon-heavy states command a mere 101 delegates among them.

Message: The GOP needs more Mormons!

Which is, of course, impossible on such short notice.

 But it’s still worth taking a moment to reflect on why it is that of all the demographic segments within the Republican electoral coalition it is Latter-day Saints — and not the young, the old, women, moderates, conservatives, evangelical Protestants, or secularists — who’ve proven largely immune to Trump’s appeal.

Some might attribute it to Mitt Romney’s denunciation of Trump in a speech earlier this month and ongoing efforts to ensure that he fails to win his party’s nomination prior to the Republican National Convention in July. Romney is a Mormon, his fellow Mormons admire him, and the result is that very few members of the LDS Church are now willing to vote for Trump.

But this gets things backwards. Mormons aren’t opposed to Trump because Romney is. Romney and his fellow Mormons are opposed to Trump…because they’re Mormons.

Linker then lists six distinct reasons Mormons are not swayed by Trump with longer explanations here.

In brief he suggests:

  1. Mormons aren’t angry.
  2. Mormons disapprove of Trump’s garish life style.
  3. Mormons dislike vulgarity.
  4. Mormons prize law-abidingness.
  5. Mormons like immigration reform.
  6. Mormons don’t hate Muslims.