Wednesday, 22 December 2004

Gay marriage and Democrats

The GayPatriot thinks that pro-gay-rights advocates have “red state” demographics working against them (þ: InstaPundit). They may also have some problems in their base—in states “blue” and “red” alike. Here’s some numbers among self-identified Democrats from the exit poll we did in Jackson (estimated margin of error ±3.6%, α=0.05):

Race Supports same-sex marriage ban Opposes same-sex marriage ban
Black 79.5% 20.5%
White 39.9% 60.1%

Now, I would expect Jackson voters (black or white) to be more socially conservative than those in the nation at large, but I don’t think that 40-point margin between black and white Democrats would be that much smaller in, say, Oakland or Boston.

Of course, turning this into a working cross-cutting cleavage for Republicans is going to be hard work as long as the GOP can’t keep its semi-regular bigot eruptions under control.