Poll: 22% of Americans wouldn’t back a Mormon for president

Can a Mormon win the U.S. presidency in 2012?

It's possible, but 22 percent of Americans currently say they wouldn't be willling to vote for a Mormon, according to a Gallup Poll released Monday.

The question is key to the White House hopes of two Republicans: GOP front-runner Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman, the former Utah governor and U.S. ambassador to China who plans an official campaign announcement on Tuesday. The two men are both members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, commonly called Mormons.

Not to worry -- there's still plenty of time to change voters' minds when it comes to religious prejudice, if history is any guide.

In 1959, 25 percent of Americans said they wouldn't vote for a Catholic president. Public opposition fell, however, and John F. Kennedy in 1960 was elected the nation's first Catholic leader. Prejudice lingered after he took office with 13 percent saying in August 1961 they still wouldn't pick a Catholic president. Now, such opposition is down to 7 percent, Gallup said.

The telephone poll was conducted June 9-12. It randomly sampled 1,020 adults, 18 or older, and living in all 50 states and Washington, D.C.

The survey didn't release any specific findings on Nevada, where Mormons make up about 7.5 percent of the 2.7 million population.

In 2008, Romney won the non-binding GOP presidential caucus in Nevada thanks to heavy Mormon turnout -- about 25 percent of those who voted, with 9 of 10 Mormons backing him.

Gallup showed Democrats were least willing to back a Mormon, with 27 percent saying they would not. That's compared to 18 percent of Republicans and 19 percent of independents. (Overall, 76 percent of those surveyed said they could vote for a Mormon, 22 percent said they couldn't and 2 percent had no opinion.)

Only two groups finished higher than Mormons on the voting prejudice index, according to Gallup: homosexuals and people who don't believe in God. The poll found that 49 percent would not support an atheist presidential candidate and 32 percent would not back a gay or lesbian person running for president.

Although the United States now has its first African-American leader in President Barack Obama, 5 percent said they still wouldn't be willing to vote for a black president.

Six percent said they wouldn't back a woman, 7 percent wouldn't support a Catholic or a Baptist, 9 percent wouldn't vote for a Jewish president and 10 percent wouldn't support a Hispanic.

Gallup said voting prejudice against all of those groups had dropped during the past few decades, but has held steady against Mormons. American's reluctance to support a Mormon for president has been about 20 percent since 1967 when Gallup first began to measure it, the polling organization said.

"However, Kennedy's success in overcoming a similar challenge in 1960 relating to his Catholic faith may give hope to Romney and his supporters about his electability in 2012," Gallup said.

And to Huntsman, although Romney has a big jump on his fellow Mormon believer as well as the rest of the GOP presidential field, according to other early opinion polls.