Source: San Francisco Chronicle, San Jose Mercury News
In a dramatic reversal of decades of public opinion, California voters agree by a slim majority that same-sex couples should be allowed to marry -- a finding that pollsters describe as a milestone driven by younger people.
The Field Poll result, released today, shows the highest level of support in more than three decades of polling Californians on the hot-button issue of same-sex marriage laws. The poll found 51 percent of registered voters favor the idea of allowing gay and lesbian couples to wed, while 42 percent disapprove.
An almost identical result was recorded in the random survey of whether voters favor an amendment to the state constitution that will likely appear on the November ballot, which seeks to define marriage as between a man and a woman: Fifty-one percent opposed that proposal, the survey reported, while 43 percent approved of the restrictive amendment.
"I would characterize it as a historic poll," said Field Poll Director Mark DiCamillo, noting that a marked number of young voters -- more than two of every three -- supported permitting same-sex nuptials. DiCamillo called the result one of the rare issues "where public tolerance I would say is generationally induced."
Only 28 percent favored gay marriage in 1977, when the Field Poll first asked that question, DiCamillo said.
"This is a milestone in California," he said. "You can't downplay the importance of a change in an issue we've been tracking for 30 years."
While opposition to same-sex marriage has been weakening for years in California, supporters have remained a minority. In March 2000, for example, voters overwhelmingly backed Proposition 22, a statute that said the state would recognize only the marriage of a man and a woman. A 2006 Field Poll showed that half the state's voters still disapproved of same-sex marriage.
But the state Supreme Court's decision this month to overturn Prop. 22 might have turned the tide, DiCamillo said.
"There's a certain validation when the state Supreme Court makes a ruling that you can't discriminate when it comes to marriage," he said. "That may have been enough to move some people who were on the fence about same-sex marriage."
The Field findings were released less than a week after another statewide survey, the Los Angeles Times/KTLA Poll, showed a different outcome of the divided population: 41 percent of respondents said they approved of the Supreme Court's decision to allow same-sex marriage, and 52 percent said they disapproved.
"When we get results that we think are surprising, we double- and triple-check our numbers, and that's what we did here," said DiCamillo. "Everything in this poll is consistent internally."
It's not unusual for two polls to have conflicting numbers, Steve Kinney, a veteran GOP pollster, told the San Francisco Chronicle.
"It's all in the methodology, who you actually talked to and whether they accurately represented that state as a whole," he said. "But even if you have confidence in your numbers, you're always scared if you come up with something totally different. Are you wrong, or is the other guy?"
"Either way you look at it, they're close," Larry Gerston, a San Jose State University political scientist, told San Jose Mercury News. "From a statistical point of view, they're not as far apart as people think."
The Field poll, based on a telephone survey of 1,052 registered voters, has a margin of error of 3.2 percentage points, and the results, while notable, show the public clearly divided on the issue. When voters were asked about the ruling, the results were nearly even: 48 percent supporting the court ruling permitting same-sex marriage, and 46 percent opposed.
Younger voters and those living in Democratic urban strongholds were the most supportive of same-sex marriage. The poll found support for same-sex marriage strongest in the state's second-largest urban center, the Bay Area. But in the more conservative Central Valley, and counties outside Los Angeles, more voters disapprove than approve.
55 percent of those who live along California's heavily populated coast back same-sex marriage compared with 40 percent who live in its inland areas.
Democrats approve permitting gay marriage 65 percent to 29 percent, and independents favored the idea 61 percent to 27 percent, the poll found. Republicans surveyed opposed the measure 69 percent to 25 percent.
The issue divides even more strongly along liberal-conservative lines; 85 percent of strong liberals are in favor, and 85 percent of strong conservatives are opposed.
Protestants, who make up a third of the state's voters, oppose same-sex marriage 34 percent to 57 percent, while Catholics are split almost equally, 45 percent in favor to 48 percent opposed. Those with no religious preference back same-sex marriage 81 percent to 12 percent.
The random-sample survey went into circulation May 17 -- just two days after the California Supreme Court's landmark ruling that struck down the state's ban on same-sex marriage, a decision that opponents would like voters to overturn through the proposed amendment. Gay marriages are likely to begin this summer, unless the state court agrees to reconsider its ruling or delay its taking effect until after the November election.
Support for same-sex marriage has been growing steadily in California, and the youngest voters are pushing the hardest. Among voters 18 to 29 years old, 68 percent back gay marriage, compared with only 36 percent of those 65 and older, the Field Poll found.
It's a "generational replacement, with older folks being replaced by younger voters very much in favor of same-sex marriage," DiCamillo said.
Those younger voters "have grown up with people who are out in their lives, whether it's politicians in the news or people they know," said Geoff Kors, executive director of Equality California, one of the groups opposed to the proposed initiative to ban same-sex marriage.
Jesse Guerrero, a 71-year-old retired vinyl floor installer from San Jose, told the Mercury News that he can attest to the generational divide.
"My daughter is 37, she's pretty liberal, more liberal than I am, and it doesn't bother her. She says let people live the way they want," said Guerrero, who participated in the Field Poll. "But I'm of the belief that men and women were put on this Earth for procreation," Guerrero said, "and they certainly cannot get procreation out of two men married."
Another Field Poll respondent, Ursula Cabalzar, 59, of Santa Clara, formed a pro-gay-marriage attitude after growing up in Switzerland.
"I do not understand what the difference is, if as a heterosexual you have about a 50 percent failure rate, yet, how can we say that we value the institution of marriage - and we want to deny it to other people that love one another?"
The dramatic movement of opinion on the issue over the past few years hasn't been by accident, Kors said. San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom's dramatic -- and later overturned -- decision to issue marriage licenses to gay couples in 2004, the Legislature's passage of two bills to authorize same-sex marriage and other efforts have helped educate people about the issue and bring same-sex marriage into the California mainstream, he said.
"Legislators voted for same-sex marriage, and none of them were voted out of office," Kors told San Francisco Chronicle. "This (poll result) is what we'd expect, but it's also the first time we've seen a majority for same-sex marriage, and the Field Poll is as credible as it comes."
Supporters of the new initiative shrugged off the poll results, saying that it is a long time until the November election.
"The Supreme Court ruling only just happened," said Karen England, spokeswoman for the Capitol Resource Institute, one of the groups backing a ban on same-sex marriage, which is expected to be approved for the ballot in mid-June. "Once we have the measure on the ballot, the campaign can change everything."
America will be watching the fall campaign over same-sex marriage, which will have national implications, said Kors of Equality California.
"It's going to be an intense and enormous undertaking, but we're confident we'll win," he said. "But we also know that the other side is out there working just as hard and feeling just as confident."
Full article: CALIFORNIA MAJORITY BACKS GAY MARRIAGE / Field Poll director calls results a milestone | San Francisco Chronicle
First-ever majority favors gay marriage | San Jose Mercury News