Thursday July 22, 2010
Poll Finds Majority of Californians Supporting Same-Sex ‘Marriage’
By Kathleen Gilbert
SAN FRANCISCO, California, July 22, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Two polls released this week found 51% of California voters saying they favor same-sex “marriage” – a number that is relatively unchanged from polling in the lead-up to the vote to include a same-sex “marriage” ban in the state constitution.
Forty-two percent of voters in the Field Poll released Tuesday said they supported Proposition 8, California’s constitutional same-sex “marriage” ban, while 45% in the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) survey released Wednesday said the same.
The news has been reported as showing that true marriage would be defeated “if a vote was held on Proposition 8 now.”
However, a SurveyUSA poll in late October 2008 similarly found 50% of likely and actual voters opposing Proposition 8, with 47% supporting the ban. Four days later, Prop 8 passed 52%-48%. A chart by Pollster.com comparing polling data in the lead-up to Prop 8 found opponents of the measure gaining a lead just prior to the upset vote, after spending only a brief interval behind supporters.
In addition, a survey of same-sex “marriage” polling data conducted before the Prop 8 vote found that such data collected prior to elections often considerably underestimate voter support for true marriage amendments. The survey, which examined pre-vote polling data in 26 states, found that such data underestimated actual voting-day support for true marriage measures by an average of 7%.
Two days before citizens cast their vote on Proposition 8 in November 2008, San Francisco Gate columnists Phillip Matier and Andrew Ross noted that, “When it comes to gay and lesbian marriage, voters across the nation have repeatedly told pollsters one thing before going into the booth, then done the opposite when they got there.”
“In Michigan, the Gallup Poll in September 2004 had a ban on same-sex marriage losing, with just 44 percent, 51 percent opposed and the rest undecided. Come November, it ended up winning, by a lot – 59 percent to 41 percent,” they noted.
The PRRI poll, however, indicated that about a quarter of Californians have grown more supportive of same-sex “marriage,” while 8% say they have become more opposed. Twenty-nine percent say that Proposition 8 was bad for the state, 22% called it a “good thing,” while 45% said it made no difference. The Field Poll, while noticing a general trend in favor of same-sex “marriage” over many years, found that the recent data is similar to that collected over the past two years.
A lawsuit claiming that Proposition 8 is unconstitutional awaits a verdict in a California district court.