POLL: CA Voters Support Marriage Equality; Oppose 2010 Prop 8 Repeal

The Los Angeles Times is reporting on its website that a new poll shows that a slim majority of Californians supports marriage equality but also opposed voting on a repeal of Proposition 8 in 2010. The main result is that 51% of respondents supported marriage for same-sex couples while only 43% were opposed. I would note that this is quite a high number relative to recent polls, but NOT OUTSIDE THE MARGIN OF ERROR.

The California findings come from a new Los Angeles Times/University of Southern California College of Letters, Arts & Sciences poll. The survey, which interviewed 1,500 registered voters from Oct. 27 through Nov. 3, was conducted for the Times and USC by two nationally prominent polling firms, the Democratic firm Greenberg Quinlan Rosner, and the Republican firm Public Opinion Strategies. The results have a margin of error of +/-2.6 percentage points. Full results of the poll, including the status of the campaigns for governor and the U.S. Senate, will be published Sunday in the Times and on latimes.com.

The survey showed that same-sex marriage continues to reverberate differently along race and generational lines. Just over half of whites backed it, while just under half of African Americans and Latinos did.

All three groups, however, opposed having to vote on it in 2010. (Asians were questioned by the poll and included in the overall sample, but their numbers were statistically too small to isolate.) Young voters continued to be far more supportive of gay marriage rights than their elders.

Among those ages 18-29, 71% said they supported same-sex marriage; among those 65 and older, only 37% favored it. Younger voters were also one of the few groups who backedputting it on the 2010 ballot, which will be dominated by the races for governor and U.S. Senate.

The full results will be published in Sunday's paper but they seem to bolster what MadProfessah and others have been arguing for: 2012 is the earliest year that we should attempt to place an affirmative marriage equality ballot measure before voters.