Are LDS women key in S.L. vote?

Salt Lake mayoral candidate Frank Pignanelli has a challenge if he wants to unseat Mayor Rocky Anderson: finding a way to get LDS Republicans, many of them women, to come to the polls Nov. 4.

After all, Pignanelli is not LDS, female or Republican. How does he appeal to this voting bloc?

Pignanelli doesn't even have to persuade these GOP Mormons to vote for him in the officially nonpartisan contest. If they bother to show up Nov. 4, by far most are likely to vote for Pignanelli over Anderson, if past voting trends continue.

Previous exit polls in mayoral races show three-out-of-four of the LDS/GOP vote would go to Pignanelli, according to pollster Dan Jones & Associates.

Still, Anderson remains relatively popular in job-approval polls, and he won the Oct. 7 primary this year by 15 percentage points over Pignanelli, his closest challenger.

But Jones, a pollster for the Deseret Morning News and KSL-TV who has conducted such surveys in Utah for 30 years, says an interesting statistical development emerges in Salt Lake mayoral contests: Many LDS city residents, especially LDS women, are not voting.

It's a quirk.

Across the state, LDS voters are some of the most loyal in casting ballots — and LDS women are about as consistent as LDS men in doing their civic duty and voting. Leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints routinely, year in and year out, encourage all citizens, including church members, to vote.

Pignanelli says none of his literature or electronic media ads are aimed at "targeting one group or another."

"We want a large voter turnout. We think that helps us, a lot," said Pignanelli, who laughed when asked what specifically he's doing to turn out the LDS vote. "I'm supposed to tell you?"

Pignanelli said no official Republican Party lists have found their way into his campaign's "extensive" get-out-the-vote effort. But Pignanelli said some of his Republican supporters "are making calls on my behalf for fund raising and turn out the vote. But we don't know what those lists are."

He said his campaign is using public lists from the Salt Lake County Clerk's Office of registered Republicans and Democrats.

LDS Church local leaders are advised against using phone lists of ward and stake members for political or private business purposes. And Pignanelli says he has not seen any LDS Church member lists and wouldn't use them even if he had access to them.