A majority of Americans would not vote for any Muslim running for president. Over a third have issues with a Mormon residing at 1600 Pennsylvania, while 15 percent wouldn't want a Jew as Commander in Chief. These arresting results come from a new LA Times/Bloomberg poll.

The first thing to say about these numbers is that they are almost certainly an understatement. I'm sure there are people who would never admit to a pollster that they wouldn't vote for a candidate because of his or her religion, but who, in the privacy of the voting booth, might not be quite so tolerant. It's tempting to launch into a diatribe against such bigotry. But the fact that 1 in 5 voters won't support an evangelical Christian suggests there might be something a little more complex going on. (I'll happily admit however that for a considerable portion of these respondents, the motivation is likely prejudice - pure and simple). If a politician talks about how faith impacts his/her politics, it begins to become reasonable for voters to consider it. For instance, if an aspirant presidential candidate attacks gay marriage on religious grounds, then surely it is fair for a voter to say that the candidate's religious beliefs are a reason not to vote for him?  

Where all this becomes tricky is that not all adherents of a religion subscribe to, or wish to legislate, every aspect of that faith. The most obvious example is that not all Catholic politicians wish to ban abortion. So, even if you are adamantly pro-choice, you can't—or shouldn't—say you'll never vote for a Catholic. Seeing as (sadly) no Muslim is going to run for president anytime soon, the press are going to concentrate on what this means for the Mormon in the race, Mitt Romney. Romney's strategy for dealing with the issue so far has been to play up faith in the abstract, while downplaying the specifics. It'll be fascinating to see if he can pull this off. My guess is that the public are going to be too curious about whether he wears special Mormon underwear and the like for this to work. I'll also be intrigued to see how the rest of the world—particularly the Islamic world—reacts to the idea of a Mormon as the President of the United States.