As of this month, 60% of Americans now support same-sex marriage, up from 55% last year, and the highest Gallup has found on the question since it was first asked in 1996.
Regarding political affiliation, the breakdown is Democrats at 76% support, independents at 64% and Republicans at 37%. However:
Those who are opposed to gay marriage are a good deal more likely to say that a candidate’s stance on the issue can make or break whether that candidate receives their vote (37%) than those who are supportive of gay marriage (21%). And both are more likely to say the issue is a defining factor than they have been in the past.
On both ends of the political spectrum, this could make same-sex marriage a more salient issue in the 2016 election than it has been previously. While pro-gay marriage voters are more likely to hold a political candidate’s feet to the fire than in the past, there is an even larger bloc of anti-gay marriage voters who could reject a candidate for espousing marriage equality.
Gallup concludes:
While an anti-same-sex marriage position should not present a challenge for GOP candidates in the primary, it could be more challenging in a general election setting given majority support among all Americans.
I’d add that GOP presidential candidates who talk adamantly about marriage being a 2,000 institution that apparently has never changed and must not be altered by the judiciary (some would allow by popular vote) are going for the base, and in all likelihood never going to be president.
But they’ll carry the hardcore religious right vote.
6 Comments for “Gallup Says….”
posted by Tom Scharbach on
I’d add that GOP presidential candidates who talk adamantly about marriage being a 2,000 institution that apparently has never changed and must not be altered by the judiciary (some would allow by popular vote) are going for the base, and in all likelihood never going to be president.
I wouldn’t be too sure about that, Stephen, assuming that you mean candidates like Governor Bush, Governor Walker or Governor Rubio, who take those positions without sounding rabid about it.
The so-called “moderate” and “libertarian” conservatives — including conservative gays and lesbians — have a long election record of voting for anti-equality Republican candidates. Support for marriage equality is not a “voting issue” for most straights, including “moderate” and “libertarian” Republicans. It isn’t a voting issue for most independents, either, if the “issue” polls, where marriage equality is typically ranked way down toward the bottom of priorities, are any indication.
It is way too early to start predicting 2016, but if the Republican Party’s candidate falls, it will be on other issues.
posted by Houndentenor on
2,000 years? Talk about a made-up statistic. It’s typical Christianist propaganda that they invented everything in our culture. Marriage predates Christianity by hundreds if not thousands of years AND it has changed drastically in the Christian era. Shame on “journalists”, politicians, and justices either too ignorant or too entitled to bother to fact-check anything they say.
Also, why is the entire GOP 2016 filed doubling down on such an unpopular position? Because the religious right has the party by the balls. This morning people are tweeting pictures of Josh Duggar with each and every announcing GOP candidate. It’s not that those candidates knew anything about his sordid past, but it does show the access that the Family Research Council and other religious right groups have to all Republicans and they dare not pander to them. Republicans created this mess by pandering to this crowd for decades and now they are stuck. I’d feel bad for them except for the damage they continue to do. If polling numbers like this aren’t enough for them to wake up, I don’t don’t know what it will take.
posted by Tom Scharbach on
Republicans created this mess by pandering to this crowd for decades and now they are stuck. I’d feel bad for them except for the damage they continue to do. If polling numbers like this aren’t enough for them to wake up, I don’t don’t know what it will take.
The Republican Party is largely immune to polls when it comes to “equal means equal”. DADT repeal, you will recall, was supported by 75-80% of Americans in 2010, and just a handful of Republicans in Congress voted for repeal. Republicans in Congress, led by 2008 presidential candidate John McCain, fell all over themselves articulating “reasons” why DADT repeal would destroy the military. It is always that way in the Republican Party on LGBT issues.
Marriage equality is no different. Republican strategists know — as Stephen does and the rest of us do — that marriage equality is becoming a “reverse wedge”, and that the party’s strong anti-equality positioning will eventually hurt the party in general elections, at least nationally. The party issued an “autopsy” report a couple of years ago that recognized the “reverse wedge” trajectory, and urged Republican candidates to “tone down the rhetoric” while continuing to remain adament in support of “traditional marriage”, to push inequality with a friendly smile rather than a snarl.
We see that strategy playing out in the Jeb Bush and Scott Walker campaigns (and will probably see it in the Kasich and Christe campaigns, should they gain enough traction to be taken seriously), and it is not working particularly well with the base. Most of the other Republican presidential hopefuls (Cruz, Huckabee, Jindal, Perry, Santorum et al) seem to be in full-blown snarl mode, vying with each other to stand out as champions of the conservative Christian base.
The simple fact, I suspect, is that 2016 is an election cycle too soon for the Republican Party to shift course. The upcoming Supreme Court decision has the conservative Chrsitian base in an uproar, and any candidate who tries to move the party beyond “anti-gay, all-day” is going to have rough sledding in the primaries this cycle.
I think, as I indicated in an earlier comment, that the Republicans will get away with it one more time this election cycle, because the party’s anti-equality position is not a “voting issue” with most straight voters or with “pro-equality” conservative voters. I think that the story will be different in 2020.
posted by Tom Jefferson III on
bout marriage being a 2,000 institution
What a 2,,000 month institution? A 2,000 day institution? A 2,000 year institution? Don’t keep me in suspense any longer.
posted by clayton on
Biblical marriage is one man and 2000 wives and concubines– just like that biblical hero, Solomon.
posted by Jorge on
The scandal!
That’s as good an argument as any for favoring big government over small government.