Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Some Jump

The historical highs are good, but it's the sudden change that really caught my eye (emph. added):

Forty-two percent of Americans now say same sex couples should be allowed to legally marry, a new CBS News/New York Times poll finds. That's up nine points from last month, when 33 percent supported legalizing same sex marriage.

Support for same sex marriage is now at its highest point since CBS News starting asking about it in 2004.

Twenty-eight percent say same sex couples should have no legal recognition – down from 35 percent in March – while 25 percent support civil unions, but not marriage, for gay couples.

The post on CBS's site doesn't say, nor does a related NYT analysis piece, but I'm going to presume they're comparing with their own polling data from March, which was conducted using the same methodolgy (sue me, I trust the LIEbrul media sometimes). So I wonder what that quick, large shift could be explained by. Think Iowa (a "heartland" state, plus the unanimous decision by their state supreme court) and Vermont (first state to approve via legislation, not court decision) made that many people suddenly relax, nationwide?

Could be somewhat of a fluke, I suppose. The margin of error is +/- 3% for these polls, so maybe if the error in March's poll was all the way to one end and April's the other ……… but even with all that hand-waving, it'd still be a three-point change for the good, and odds are strong it's better than that.

Only one way to react to this news, right?

(h/t: Steve Benen | pic. source)



Notes:

  1. In the interests of equality, I was going to post a picture of two women kissing, too, but I couldn't find any on the Internet.

  2. In the interests of equality, I will link to a nice wholesome heterosexual kiss, for Rick Santorum.

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