A majority of voters say President Obama’s decision to come out in support of gay marriage will not sway their decision in the fall election.Losing 12% support among independents is HUGE. It was independents that put him over the top in 2008 and he's been losing support with them steadily since then. A one day decision costing him 12% could be a real game changer.
According to a Gallup poll released on Friday, 60 percent of adults nationally said Obama’s new position makes no difference, while 26 percent said it would make them less likely to vote for the president and 13 percent said it would make them more likely to.
The numbers are similar when broken down by party affiliation — 65 percent of Democrats and 63 percent of independents said it made no difference, while nearly half of Republicans, 46 percent, said the same.
Democrats are more likely to say that the position bolsters their view of the president, with 24 percent saying it made them more likely to vote for Obama, versus 10 percent who said less likely.
Those numbers are essentially reversed among independents, with only 11 percent saying it would make them more likely to vote for Obama, compared to 23 percent who said less likely.
Gallup says 51% now support gay marriage, but that certainly doesn't jive with the fact that gay marriage loses big every time it's on the ballot. It's lost in 32 of 32 state races. It's on the ballot again in Minnesota and it will be close, but then it's so cold up there those people will huddle with anything warm.
Why the discrepancy between the polling and the actual elections? People lie to pollsters. They don't want the pollsters to think their bigots or homophobes so even though they don't support gay marriage some people will tell them they do just to be on the politically correct side. It's a weakness - people want to be liked. When the curtain closes in the voting booth, though, things change. If we could get the real polling numbers on gay marriage I'm guessing it would still lose by 10-15 points.
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If the 70% of blacks who voted against Prop 8 is mirrored nationally, this could severely hurt The Won. Make him The Lost.
Who cares what Obama says. Nothing has changed. It is still a sin to commit homosexuality. God said it is sin will always be sin and sin will be punished wherever it is found.
I have a hard time believing that a move this big would be done without focus-group polling out the yinyang. It looks clumsy from the outside looking in, but I have to believe that they put at least a month's worth of preparation into finding out how much they'd lose or gain afterward.
Also, keep in mind that this is the same group that kept Lieberman in the Democrat fold even after he stabbed the party in the back -because they needed his vote. They wanted to make an example out of him soooo bad, but they did the math and did what they needed to do. They are calculating.
Finally, this move solidifies his base and kicks white working-class voters in the nuts, which is exactly what the NY Times said they'd be doing months ago.
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