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A Record Number Of Voters Support Gay Marriage, New Poll Finds
A record number of voters now support gay marriage, a NBC/Wall Street Journal poll released Monday found.
The poll shows that an all-time high 59 percent of American voters support same-sex marriage — nearly double the amount of voters who supported it in 2004. Support has also increased among conservative voters, with 35 percent now saying they back same-sex marriage, an increase of 9 percentage points from April 2013.
Fred Yang, a Democratic pollster who conducted the survey with Republican Bill McInturff, told the Wall Street Journal that support for gay marriage was increasing among voters faster than attitudes towards interracial marriage, now supported by 87 percent of Americans.
Despite the increase in support among conservatives, the poll found that it’s still unclear how a GOP candidate’s position on same-sex marriage would affect their chances with the electorate. Fifty percent of Republican primary voters said that they would view a candidate who supported gay marriage less favorably, while just 19 percent said that they would view the candidate more favorably.
Republicans seem to be taking a somewhat softer tone on gay marriage, and the party’s 2016 hopefuls recently have seemed reluctant to talk about the issue.
The poll comes as courts consider the legal fate of gay marriage. Last week, the Alabama Supreme Court ordered probate judges in the state to stop issuing same-sex marriage licenses even though a federal judge ruled the state’s ban on same-sex marriage unconstitutional.
The Supreme Court will consider next month whether state bans on same-sex marriage violate the Constitution.
The NBC-WSJ poll, conducted March 1-5, surveyed 1,000 adults and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.
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