Maine: New Polls Show Race For Marriage Tighter

The polls in Maine all year have consistently shown that a majority of respondents supports marriage equality and this was instrumental in convincing activists to move forward with a pro-active campaign to enact marriage equality by ballot measure in that state.

However, in the past week two new polls were released (from PPP showing a 52-44 race and from Maine's People Resource Center showing a 53-42 race) which indicates that the margin of victory may be narrowing significantly, which is eerily similar to what happened in the 2009 Question 1 campaign in Maine and the 2008 Proposition 8 campaign, which were widely perceived to be well ahead in the polls before election day but ended up with the pro-marriage equality side losing on Election Day.

I'm not convinced that is what is going to happen in Maine, but it should be a wake-up call for supporters of marriage equality nationwide who were getting complacent about winning marriage equality at the ballot box. This is an incredibly difficult task, to ask the privileged majority to vote to end their exclusive access to civil marriage, just because it is the right thing to do.This is the central issue in civil rights battle, but previous fights for equality did not occur in the venues of superheated  electoral rhetoric.

However I am optimistic that this will occur, and sooner rather than later.