Fund Your Utopia Without Me.™

10 May 2012

THE BRADLEY EFFECT & GAY MARRIAGE



“In a 2010 paper, for instance, the New York University political scientist Patrick J. Egan compared polling in advance of state same-sex marriage referendums to the actual results, and found that the share of voters in pre-election surveys saying that they will vote to ban same-sex marriage is typically seven percentage points lower than the actual vote on election day.

That seven-point gap between appearances and reality may help explain why same-sex marriage supporters lost referendums they expected to win in liberal states like Maine and California. And it explains why a savvy White House might take polls suggesting that the issue is a political winner with a very large helping of salt.”

 http://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/08/obamas-marriage-maneuvers/

http://www.pdfdownload.org/pdf2html/view_online.php?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.haasjr.org%2Fsites%2Fdefault%2Ffiles%2FMarriage%2520Polling.pdf


“Put simply, the issue of gay marriage remains highly contentious in a number of swing states: a majority of voters in North Carolina, Ohio, Virginia, and Florida continue to be against same sex marriage.

The state-by-state data from polling conducted by Public Policy Polling show that a majority of voters in key swing-states like Virginia (53%-34%), Florida (53%-37%), North Carolina (61%-31%), Wisconsin (50%-30%) and Ohio (52%-32%) oppose the legalization of gay marriage.

And according to a recent Pew poll, one in three Southern swing voters are strongly opposed to gay marriage.

All of this in light of the fact that ballot measures to legalize gay marriage have been rejected by voters nearly every time over the course of fifteen years by voters in more than 30 states — often by large margins.

Among the 30 states that have constitutional amendments banning same-sex marriages are key battleground swing-states like Florida, Ohio, Virginia, Colorado, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and North Carolina. These states have a combined 114 electoral votes up for grabs.

In light of these numbers, while yesterday’s move may be a political winner for President Obama among his progressive base, it may very well cost him the support of swing voters whose vote will be central to his success in winning reelection.”


http://douglasschoen.com/why-obamas-gay-marriage-endorsement-could-ultimately-be-more-harmful-than-helpful/


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Sophie:

Yes, it is true that polls show that a majority of Americans support SSM, but I would take them with a few grains of salt for a couple of reasons.  First, there is very obviously a Bradley Effect going on because the polling data never reflects the actual vote tallies.  No one was surprised that the constitutional amendment passed in North Carolina.  Nearly everyone was shocked by the margin of the victory for the opponents.

The other reason is very simple:  SSM is not at the top of the overwhelming majority of Americans' list of priorities.  I support SSM, but if it were the only issue on the ballot, I seriously doubt that I could be bothered to make it to the polls.  It is just not that important to me.  On the other hand, people, who are opposed to SSM, would be very much inclined to make it to the polls to vote if that were the only issue on the ballot.

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