The Strength and Size of the Church in Different Mexican States

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints claims 1,121,933 members residing in 212 stakes, 41 districts, and about 2,000 congregations in Mexico. With around 107 million inhabitants, this works out to around 1.05 % or 1 out of every 95 Mexicans belonging to the Church. Mexico has the second largest membership of the Church, after the United States.

If you look at the Church in the United States, you will find areas where the percentage of members in the population is substantially high (~70% in Utah) to areas where it is quite low (a third of a percent in Rhode Island). Overall, the United States is around 2% LDS.

The Church does not publish statistics on membership for each of the states in Mexico. To calculate the strength and size of the Church in different Mexican states, I have divided the population of the state by the number of stakes and districts (which I count as half a stake). Although this method is not perfect, it gives us an idea as to where members of the Church make up a larger percentage versus a smaller percentage of the population in Mexico. In other words, the smaller the number of people per stake, the greater the percentage of members in the Church.

The state with the highest percentage of members in Mexico (calculated from the aforementioned method) is Yucatan, with 225,000 people per stake. Yucatan is obviously located on the Yucatan Pennisula, the capital city being Merida. The states with the lowest percentage of members are Michoacan (1,329,000 people per stake) and Guanajuato (1,223,000 people per stake). Both Michoacan and Guanajuato are between Mexico City and Guadalajara.

Below is a list of the different Mexican states and the population per stake.


Yucatán
225,375
Tamaulipas
241,600
Querétaro
245,077
Coahuila
260,526
Sonora
280,471
Quintana Roo
283,500
Morelos
291,818
Chihuahua
294,364
Mexico State
301,298
Sinaloa
307,059
Baja California
315,778
Durango
330,889
Nuevo León
333,120
Baja California Sur
344,667
Oaxaca
370,737
Hidalgo
389,000
Veracruz
416,529
Puebla
468,783
Campeche
500,667
Aguascalientes
525,500
Tlaxcala
530,500
Colima
562,000
Tabasco
575,143
Nayarit
628,667
Chiapas
654,769
Zacatecas
678,500
San Luis Potosí
689,143
Jalisco
700,211
Guerrero
779,000
Guanajuato
1,223,250
Michoacán
1,329,333