Polls on Same-Sex Marriage State Laws

[Marokai Backbeat]

California 2000 vs California 2008 maybe? I dunno. Avert your eyes if you don't wanna see the "trend".

Let me, the homosexual lobby LOST in 2008 in California.

Interesting trend.

Do you know what the word "trend" means?

[Marokai Backbeat]

California 2000 vs California 2008 maybe? I dunno. Avert your eyes if you don't wanna see the "trend".

Let me, the homosexual lobby LOST in 2008 in California.

Interesting trend.

Do you know what the word "trend" means?

Well, lets look at the record.

Yes, let's 'look' at the 'record' then, 'Carl.'

It's not even that complicated, you only have to just look at a wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_opinion_of_same-sex_marriage_in_the_United_States

In the mid-90s, support for gay marriage was in the mid-high 20's. Throughout the early 2000's, support nudged upward through the 30s. In the last 3-4 years, support for gay marriage as evolved rapidly. This isn't a matter of opinion, the country is coming around to supporting gay marriage and it will happen whether you like it or not, sooner or later. There has been an undeniable upward tend in support for gay marriage in the last 15 years.

As the poster previous to me just mentioned, there's been an 18% swing in favor of gay marriage from 2000 to 2008. Since 2008, the national opinion of gay marriage has swung even more in favor of gay marriage.

This is what trend means, Carl:

trend (plural trends)
    An inclination in a particular direction

[Marokai Backbeat]

Morakai,

Way to go, Carl.

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Whether or not you can accept it, this is not a matter of your opinion, this is an empirical, checkable thing. Look at the Gallup graph above, alone. Support for gay marriage has practically doubled since the mid-90s. Look at every polling company ever and their data on this issue over a decade, and support for gay marriage increases regularly. It's increased even faster than usual in the last few years.

[Marokai Backbeat]

Carl already pointed that polling on this issue is misleading.

1. Polling companies routinely "cook the books" either deliberately or through the way in which they word their questions.

2. Individuals often do not give accurate information to pollsters.

3. There is a marked difference between the national polls on this issue, and individual State polls. If the national polls like the Gallup garbage are correct, then Pennsylvania shouldn't have a 20+ point gap against homosexual 'marriage'.

So either Gallup is wrong, PPP is wrong, or something else is going on.

4. Polling companies changed the wording of the way that they asked the question. This means that any polls before/after that change cannot be compared.

5. A recent national poll using different wording found 62% opposition to changing the definition of marriage. (This would be more in line with the 20 point gap found in Pennsylvania).

We all know gay marriage overpolls in most cases by a few points, there's no doubt about that. And different polling firms will come to slightly different conclusions and there are always outliers. But this isn't some recent trend. This is something we've been seeing over the course of two decades and continuing, which has manifested itself not only in public opinion but also in election results, and in entertainment, in pop culture. Gays are becoming an accepted group in all respects, including in the political realm.

Faced with that fact, there are only two possible responses you could possibly give: Polling companies are wildly off, all of them, every time, or this is some sort of mass conspiracy perpetrated by multiple polling firms and organizations for the purpose of.. something I don't quite understand yet. If you believe the former, you're wrong, (since that doesn't square with recent referendum results, losses or no), and if you believe the latter, you are impossible to reason with on any level.

[Marokai Backbeat]

I still don't understand how anyone ever had any hope of that amendment failing. It's North Carolina.

[Marokai Backbeat]

Surprisingly not-completely-awful Montana numbers.

[Marokai Backbeat]

Pretty good jumps for both states. Oh, what a little Presidential support can do for a cause.

[Marokai Backbeat]

PPP

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Interesting, indeed.

I love PPP.

[Marokai Backbeat]

Always a Senate's fault, isn't it?

[Marokai Backbeat]

The Maine ballot measure leads 52-45, says PPP. Cautiously optimistic here. Anyone remember what the polls were saying here before the last vote?

http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/main/2012/11/obama-king-marriage-lead-in-maine.html

PPP did two polls in the last couple weeks before the initiative in 2009, the first was a 48-48 tie, the last was 51-47 in favor of passing the repeal, which was pretty much exactly the final result. The language on this initiative is pretty simple, yes for gay marriage, no for keeping the ban, and polling has been much more favorable this time around, though for obvious reasons we should remain cautious. But gay marriage is in much better shape in the polls of Maine this time around.

[Marokai Backbeat]

What I would really like is to abolish the states. I don't see them as some type of 'free enablers' but as a great way to divert attention and focus for divide and conquer techniques and as loopholes for national standards. I think we would have dealt more effectively with things like healthcare years ago if we had a unicameral national legislature.

A man after my own heart.