Latest Field Poll Shows Prop 8 Losing 55% No, 38% Yes

The Field Poll released its latest poll (pdf) on Proposition 8 yesterday and there continues to be good news: 55% of likely voters say they intend to vote NO to the elimination of the rights of gay and lesbian couples to marry, while 38% say they will vote YES. This is a change from last month when the numbers were 51%-42%.

The poll analyzed the impact of the change in the ballot summary by Attorney General Jerry Brown to straightforwardly describe that, if passed, the measure would ban gay marriage, not simply "Limit Marriage" as the original circulated ballot language stated.

Among the 70 percent of likely voters who already were familiar with Proposition 8, the modification appeared to make little difference. Among those who knew about the amendment, 56 percent said they opposed it when they heard the original wording and 53 percent opposed it they were given Brown's revised version.

But among the 30 percent of those surveyed who were not previously aware of the measure, the ballot language appeared to matter. Within that subgroup, 42 percent of the respondents said they were inclined to vote 'no' with the original summary, a share that climbed to 58 percent under the new wording.

[...]

"It's not surprising given the attorney general's latest attempt to influence the elections. We were expecting it would affect the numbers by a few percentage points," [Yes On 8 spokeswoman] Kerns said.

At the same time, she said the Yes on 8 campaign's internal polling shows voters to be much more evenly divided and the initiative's backers expect support to pick up once they start airing television commercials later this month.

Kerns also disputed the Field Poll's accuracy, noting that in the weeks before California voters considered a gay marriage ban in March 2000, the company found support for it topping out at 53 percent. The measure—one of two marriage laws the Supreme Court overturned as unconstitutional—passed with more than 61 percent of the vote.

It is true that the Field Poll under-estimated the heterosexual supremacist vote by at least 8 percentage points in 2000, and I really expect that the ballot measure will fail by a nail-bitingly close margin. DONATE NOW TO STOP PROPOSITION 8!