POLL: Nationwide Support For Marriage Equality

A new poll from ABC News/Washington Post has progressives like myself smiling because they show majority support for the liberal position on immigration reform and marriage equality with marijuana legalization very closely split.

After last Tuesday's results which showed that in Maryland, Maine, Minnesota and Washington majorities of voters supported the pro-marriage equality position at the ballot it is not surprising that a new poll shows that 51% if respondents support marriage equality versus 47% who oppose it.

GAY MARRIAGE – Fifty-one percent of Americans support gay marriage, slightly more than half for the fifth time straight in ABC/Post polls since March 2011, and up sharply from its levels in similar questions earlier this decade, as low as 32 percent (of registered voters) in mid-2004. 

More in this survey are “opposed” to gay marriage, 47 percent, than said in recent polls that it should be “illegal” (39 percent last May), likely because making something illegal is more punitive than opposing it personally. 

While 30 states have constitutionally banned gay marriage, voters approved pro-gay marriage ballot initiatives in Maryland, Maine and Washington last week, and those in Minnesota rejected a constitutional ban on it. Obama announced his personal support for gay marriage in May, saying individual states should decide on its legality. 

Last week’s exit poll found voters similarly divided, 49-46 percent, on gay marriage. Supporters favored Obama over Mitt Romney by 73-25 percent. And Obama won gay and lesbian voters, 5 percent of the electorate, by 76-22 percent, vs. 70-27 percent in 2008. 

Support for gay marriage in this poll tops out at more than three in four liberals and more than six in 10 young adults and Democrats. It’s opposed by a broad 81 percent of those who describe themselves as “very conservative,” and by two-thirds of senior citizens.

This is just another example of how the electorate did not just reject Mitt Romney as a candidate, but conservative ideology as a political philosophy. It will be interesting to see how they react.