Poll shows support for same-sex marriage rebounding

Interesting finding from the latest Pew poll (curtsy: (liberal) Girl Next Door):

Gay marriage remains a divisive issue, with 51 percent opposing it, the poll by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found. But almost two-thirds, 63 percent, opposed gay marriage in February 2004.

“Most Americans still oppose gay marriage, but the levels of opposition are down and the number of strong opponents are down,” said Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center. […]

The number of people who say they strongly oppose gay marriage has dropped from 42 percent in early 2004 to 28 percent now. Strong opposition has dropped sharply among senior citizens and Republicans.

These new results are pretty similar to the results from July 2003 – before the Massachusetts Supreme Court’s Goodridge decision. Post-Goodridge, opposition to SSM jumped way up (and support for SSM dropped), and has only now receeded to 2003 levels. So the question is, will the numbers keep on moving in the pro-SSM direction, or have we just returned to the “norm” of pre-Goodridge level support?

Speaking of polls, last year the anti-SSM organization IMAPP triumphantly pointed out that support for same-sex marriage among college freshman had dropped. From the front page of their report (pdf link):

Most strikingly , a recent UCLA poll showed support for gay marriage dropping among college students. Between 2003 and 2004 the proportion of college freshman who support gay marriage dropped almost 3 percentage points, from 59.4 percent to 56.7 percent, or down to about the level of support for SSM last recorded in 2000. This is the first recorded drop in support for same-sex marriage since the question was first asked in 1997.

They can say that because they’re a right-wing think tank. If the report had been published in a peer-reviewed journal, the peer reviewers would have forced them to acknowlege the obvious: When a long-standing trend reverses itself by a tiny amount for a single year, there’s a good chance that what’s going on is statistical noise (the possibility isn’t even mentioned in the IMAPP paper).

This year’s UCLA poll shows an upward trend compared to last year – 58%. I don’t think these tiny year-to-year fluctuations mean anything – but if IMAPP were to be consistant, they’d have to report this year’s slight rise with the same prominance they reported last year’s slight decline.

Joshua Baker, the author of the IMAPP report, says he plans to issue an updated report later this year. My bet is that now that the trend isn’t in the direction he’d favor, he’ll mention what he should have pointed out last year – which is that year-to-year fluctuations might be meaningless.

Another point not mentioned in IMAPP’s report: When religious colleges are excluded from the sample, support for same-sex marriage moves up from 58% to 65%. I emailed this finding to Professor Baker, so he can include it in this year’s report.