Less Than Half of Americans Know Romney's a Mormon

A new survey from the Public Religion Research Institute shows that less than half of Americans know GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney is a Mormon, despite recent media attention focused on his faith, the Religion News Service reports. Just 42 perent of Americans indentified Romney as a Mormon, a figure that remains unchanged since July 2011 even though Romney's faith has been the subject of attention since Texas Gov. Rick Perry called it a cult. The only group that showed an increased knowledge about Romney's religion was white evangelicals, whose awareness of his Mormon faith rose from 44 percent in July to 53 percent in mid-October. This "is potentially problematic for Romney, since we know from our research that six in 10 evangelicals do not see the Mormon faith to be a Christian religion," said Daniel Cox, the PRRI's research director.