In a poll billed as the “first public opinion poll of 2013 on marriage rights for gay and lesbian couples,” a majority of Americans—”91% of Democrats, 75% of Independents, and 56% of Republican voters”—believe that gay marriage is a Constitutional right. I think this second part of the poll is even more exciting than that:

With nine states now allowing same-sex couples to legally marry and more moving in that direction, voters almost universally believe that it will be legal nationally in the next five to ten years (83%), and 77% believe that it will be legal nationally “in the next couple of years” – regardless of their personal opinion on the issue. This represents a sizeable increase since 2011 when 72% believed it would happen in the next five to ten years, and 67% believed it would happen in “the next couple of years.” While Democratic voters feel most strongly (82% believe it will happen in the next couple years), huge margins of Independents and Republicans feel the same way (73% and 70% respectively).

This is exciting stuff. Go read all the heartening poll results.

5 replies on “Gay Marriage Has Gone Mainstream”

  1. Either the survey has some problems, or we might actually have to thank the Tea Party for something.

    The neocons from 5-10 years ago were staunchly against legalizing gay marriage because of the whole “we are a Christian nation” argument. Being ousted from power has turned them anti-government, which might actually have the surprising side effect of making them now think that, at the very least, who gets married shouldn’t be left to the government to decide.

    Then again, responding to a survey and voting are very different. Let’s hope to see it on the ballot here soon, or even a DOMA repeal.

  2. The Tea Party was just the Republican Party rebranded, and they have the same views on social issues. This has nothing to do with the Tea Party.

    As a researcher who has done a lot of survey work, my first inclination is to distrust the wording of the questions which were probably written from a sympathetic point of view and made it less favorable to answer in the negative. I’ve also never heard of Anzalone Liszt Grove Research. Attitudes toward gay marriage are changing rapidly, and I’ve no doubt it will continue the trend toward legalization, but I’m hesitant to put any real weight into the specific results of this particular survey, especially since they didn’t publish question text or crosstabs.

  3. I don’t trust these poll results; they feel off in the same way (though of course the opposite direction) as the ones FRC and NOM like to promote.

    But in the meantime… I actually came to this page by clicking a link that read “Business Owners Risk Losing WiFi Because of Pirating Patrons” and would like to read that article, but cannot find it. Certainly there’s nothing about it here.

  5. Thank you. That’s actually a follow-up article to the one I was trying to read (and successfully found after posting here.)

    Both very interesting, and neither I’d have found if not for whatever mixup made the earlier one’s title show up as a link to this one.

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