Eric Kleefeld at TPM has a summary of a Seina poll conducted earlier this month among registered New York state voters. On the question of whether to legalize same-sex marriage, support beats oppose 53% - 39%, with 8% still in the closet undecided. The margin of error is 3.8%.
Yeah!
Now the question looms: will the will of the people be overridden by the activist State Senate? (Maybe "inactivist" would be more accurate.) This is the only real hurdle. The State Assembly approved a same-sex marriage bill in 2007, and indications (e.g., e.g.) are that they will pass it by an even larger margin this time. Governor David Paterson clearly wants to sign this into law. He did, remember, introduce this latest version of the bill, and he was part of the effort that shepherded the 2007 version through the Assembly when he was Lt. Governor. Here is a picture of him announcing his proposed legislation last week, which you already saw if you clicked that second "e.g." link, and if you did, you already know that New Hampshire has started debating this, too, so I won't need to add that at the bottom, but pay attention because we're talking about New York:
PDFs of Siena's poll report and the crosstabs are available. Scroll to question 26 in the latter. Or just keep reading, because I already did that, although I will not be typing any more % signs from here on in.
Some not surprising but still sad stories among the subgroups who oppose: Blacks are slightly (49-44) against, as are men overall (47-43). Protestants are pretty strongly (53-41) opposed, and so are people 55 and older (52-42 against). Republicans are very strongly (59-31) opposed, but the good news here is that there only a few thousand of them left in the whole state. (Ixnay on the ecretsay EMAFay ampscay.)
All other subgroups are in favor. Most are not surprising, although some of the margins are. For example, Democrats are 59-35 in favor but Independents are even more pronounced: 67-24. So much for
"polarized electorate" ==> "independent" = "moderate"
in this state, at least. Or maybe they're all libertarians? Who knows.
As I would have expected, those in New York City widely approve (58-36). There was no separate category for metrosexuals. I looked. Happily and a little eyebrow-raisingly, both the 'burbs (51-42) and we flyover peeps upstate (50-40) have good margins, too.
Whites strongly approve (56-36), Latinos do even better (57-31). (Note to self: abandon that stereotype.) There is no category for Asians, so I guess we're calling them Latinos now, and why not? We have a Kenyan Indonesian Hawaiian president and our governor is blind, after all. Oh, and women of all ages and all ethnicities rock (61-32). But you knew that.
The group I now like to call the young adults (ages 35-54) strongly approves (54-37), and it's a landslide among the kids aged 18-34 (71-20), which doesn't matter, because they never vote. (OH YEAH, THAT'S A THROWDOWN.)
Rounding up the rest of the religious groups: Catholics are slightly on the side of the angels (49-41), the Jews show why they are the chosen people (64-32), and "Other" are even more holy (69-24). On, Muslims! On, Hindus! On, Buddhists and Wiccans! And since there is no separate column under Religion for "Nuns," I presume "Other" also includes the atheists.
Go team!
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