I woke up yesterday morning and decided to do something nerdy. (Doesn't everyone?)
Thanks to Nate Silver's famous graphics, we know that national polling for marriage equality has been rising at about 2% per year since 2004, and opposition has been falling at the same rate, for a net gain of 4% per annum and reaching 50% support for same-sex marriage this year. But what about state polling data, where the people who are polled are generally registered voters, not all adults as are asked by most of the national polls?
I decided to look at the most recent 2012 polling for marriage equality in each state that had such polling, and then compare it to polling done as close to a year ago in that state on the same topic -- again, if such polling existed.
It turns out that (thanks mostly to Public Policy Polling) there are seventeen states with such polling data. Here's the upshot.
What does that mean exactly?
Suppose a poll in May 2011 was 44% in favor of legalizing same-sex marriage, and 46% opposed, while a poll in May of 2012 showed 47% in favor of marriage equality and 44% opposed. That would be a swing of 5% (3% more in favor, 2% less against).
How did I select the polls? I only looked at polls that asked a yes-or-no, legal or illegal, support or not type question (some polls ask a three choice marriage-civil unions-no recognition question). If a state had any 2012 polls, I selected the latest one. If the state did not have any 2011 polls, I didn't include that state. If the state did have 2011 polls, I selected the one closest to May, 2011, i.e., a year ago.
Here's the state-by-state results:
2012: 45.5% - 45.5%, 2011: 41.6% - 47.9%
Averaged swing: 6.3%
This data only represents the seventeen states listed, and the averages are not weighted by state populations. Still, it is interesting to see that for this sample average as many registered voters now support marriage equality as don't. That, if confirmed by national polling of registered voters on the matter, would be another significant milestone on the path to making Tony Perkins look more foolish than he already does (admittedly an extremely difficult task).
Despite a depressing defeat in North Carolina, this data allows us to take solace in the fact that marriage equality gained 6% in the Tarheel State over the last year. In 2004, for more perspective, four southern states voted for amendments banning same-sex marriage by at least 75%.
A spate of favorable polling in the wake of President Obama's "coming out" shows that there is good reason to believe that November, 2012 will be unlike any other election. For the first time, voters seem likely to support marriage equality in three states: Maine, Maryland and Washington. And in Minnesota, poll results that will come out tomorrow
PublicPolicyPolling @ppppolls There has been a big shift over the last 4 months against the Minnesota marriage amendment. That poll will be out tomorrow.
By the time the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act is considered by the Supreme Court -- possibly as early next year now -- there's a good chance that more than 15% of Americans will be living in states with marriage equality. That's still a far cry from 100%, but at the rate things are a changin...
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