Big Mormon turnout for Mitt Romney expected in Nevada caucus vote

HENDERSON, Nev. — Just before Mitt Romney took the stage in a shopping center parking lot here Friday evening amid palm trees and grocery carts, former Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt rallied the crowd.

Describing how Romney turned around the scandal scarred 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, Leavitt urged voters to support him in Saturday's GOP caucus vote.

"Tomorrow we caucus and we send the message that we need Mitt Romney,'' Leavitt said. "Nevada will send him on his way."

Polls give Romney a considerable lead over former U.S. House speaker Newt Gingrich, Texas Rep. Ron Paul and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum in Nevada, a state with a significant number of voters who share Romney's Mormon faith.

"Every campaign has a base," Leavitt told the Deseret News. "It's made up of many different people who feel some alignment. It could be geographic, it could be they went to the same school, it could be they share the same faith."

For a Mormon candidate it's easier to connect with that base in a place like Nevada. "It plays out different in different areas," Leavitt said. "When you go to certain places in the south, it's not that prominent. But when you come to places in the west, it is."

A new poll for the Review Journal and KLAS-TV in Las Vegas found nearly 86 percent of the Republicans surveyed who identified themselves as Mormons planned to caucus for Romney.

Four years ago, when the South Carolina primary was held on the same day as the Nevada caucuses, Romney chose to campaign in Nevada and won with 51 percent of the vote. He gambled on the support of Mormon voters in Nevada countering what was clearly going to be a difficult race in South Carolina, where many evangelical voters don't consider Mormons fellow Christians.

That's a problem Romney ran into this election year in South Carolina, where he finished a disappointing second behind Gingrich, partly because of what his campaign called a "headwind" created by how some voters viewed his faith.

Leavitt said Romney's experience in South Carolina "illustrates the point that every state is made up a little differently" and successful candidates much reach voters beyond their base.

But the former U.S. Health and Human Services secretary under President George W. Bush said a win in a state like Nevada with a favorable electorate is still a win.