Not many of these creatures exist but their dynamics would be interesting.
Well-educated Mormon sophisticates, especially in academia. There are thousands of those people in and around Provo, metro SLC, and Rexburg. The BYU precincts in Provo and Rexburg* show dramatic swings to Obama in 2008 (granted, we're talking about 15% of the vote vice 3% or whatever for Kerry in Rexburg!), followed by equally dramatic swings to Romney in 2012 and McMullin in 2016. iirc McMullin actually won a majority of voters in some of the core BYU precincts! His top two counties, at 30% each, are Provo's Utah County and Rexburg's Madison County.
Here's a real challenge: describe a Schmitz '72/McMullin '16 voter! (Hint: it's an old Mormon in Utah or Idaho)
* I don't know much about it, but I would assume the BYU-Hawaii precincts show similar trends?
It's possible that they could've been excited by Obama's candidacy, but then became disappointed in him.
Yeah, a lot of (relatively) young, affluent, university-educated Republican voters (particularly in large metropolitan areas) voted for Obama in 08 not just because of the economic meltdown, onset of the Great Recession, disillusionment over the George W. Bush Presidency, McCain's clueless ineptness, and Palin's far-right populist extremism, but also because the idea of the first black President - and the fact that Barack Obama was the black (male) Democratic nominee rather than someone like, say, Jesse Jackson or (lmao) Bobby Rush or Cornel West - was quite appealing to many people across the political spectrum.
