Interesting Article from fivethirtyeight.com: "Gay Marriage, State by State: A Tipping Point?""

[NYC_SKP]

Gay Marriage, State by State: A Tipping Point?
by Andrew Gelman @ 10:56 PM

Jeff Lax and Justin Phillips put together a dataset using national opinion polls from 1994 through 2009 and analyzed several different opinion questions on gay rights. Here I'm going to talk about their estimates of state-by-state trends in support for gay marriage.

In the past fifteen years, gay marriage has increased in popularity in all fifty states. No news there, but what was a surprise to me is where the largest changes have occurred. The popularity of gay marriage has increased fastest in the states where gay rights were already relatively popular in the 1990s.

In 1995, support for gay marriage exceeded 30% in only six states: New York, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Massachusetts, California, and Vermont. In these states, support for gay marriage has increased by an average of almost 20 percentage points. In contrast, support has increased by less than 10 percentage points in the six states that in 1995 were most anti-gay-marriage--Utah, Oklahoma, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, and Idaho.

Here's the picture showing all 50 states:



http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/06/gay-marriage-state-by-state-tipping.html

[Skinner]

1. That graph is a really great visual representation.

I feel like I'm looking at little red dots racing toward the finish line. Some are moving faster than others. But they're all moving in the same direction, and eventually they're all going to cross that finish line.

[bluedawg12]

2. The value of being out.

"A "tipping point": As gay rights become more accepted in a state, more gay people come out of the closet. And once straight people realize how many of their friends and relatives are gay, they're more likely to be supportive of gay rights. Recall that the average American knows something like 700 people. So if 5% of your friends and acquaintances are gay, that's 35 people you know--if they come out and let you know they're gay. Even accounting for variation in social networks--some people know 100 gay people, others may only know 10--there's the real potential for increased awareness leading to increased acceptance.

Conversely, in states where gay rights are highly unpopular, gay people will be slower to reveal themselves, and thus the knowing-and-accepting process will go slower."
- http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/06/gay-marriage-state-by-state-tipping.html

[NYC_SKP]

3. A related graph: Policy and Public Opinion, Same-Sex Marriage vs Civil Unions, by State.

The "slow" states are slow indeed, but they are less populous.
The trends seem to match historic acceptance of African Americans over time, damned slow in some regions of America.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Gay marriage and civil unions

Lax and Phillips look at a bunch of issues. Here's their graph showing the proportions of people in each state who favor gay marriage, and those who favor civil unions. The patterns are pretty consistent, which is no surprise. What is more interesting here is that policies on gay marriage are highly congruent with preferences--pretty much, gay marriage is legal where more than 50% of the people support it, and illegal where the policy has less than 50% support. In contrast, policies for civil unions lag behind attitudes, with several states having a majority in favor of civil unions but with no such policy enacted.




http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~cook/movabletype/archives/2009/06/gay_marriage_a.html

:patriot:

[ThomCat]

4. I think you're right. That's exactly what is behind the difference

state by state. The more "out," visible and open LGBT people there are, the more progress has been made in that state gaining support so that more people can come out and be visible and open. :)

[Jim Lane]

10. Some of it is simply practical experience

It's notable that Massachusetts is now the state with the largest percentage in support. Along with poll respondents knowing LGBT people personally, there's just the simple fact that, several years after the establishment of marriage equality, the state hasn't fallen apart. People aren't having sex with animals in the streets, or whatever the right-wing scare scenario was.

I'm sure there are some opponents of equality who felt very bad when they lost, but who now feel, "Ah, I guess it isn't that big of a deal after all."

[NYC_SKP]

11. "Permission to not hate gays"

I totally agree, it's like a peer pressure thing.

For those who aren't willing or able to be compassionate, sympathetic, or to even try to see things differently or through the eyes of others (most people, IMO), the default way to think is based on what others think and do.

As enough people come out as, "I don't hate gays", it becomes OK for the sheeple to follow and think, "well, I don't hate either!".

Pathetic, but true.

:thumbsup:

[MNBrewer]

5. Obama will be proven on the WRONG side of history in his "I'm against gay marriage" statements

Truly sad. He could be so much more.

What's a "strong civil union", anyway?

[ShadowLiberal]

6. Some of those state numbers really surprised me

I noticed this article earlier today, and a few of the state's numbers really surprised me.

-Pennsylvania: I'm shocked that PA is at the 45% mark, I would have guesstimated it's more like 40 at best as a PA resident, I mean PA has the second highest percentage of elderly in it's population, and elderly tend to be the most antigay marriage group there is. Even better yet, it's up 9 points over the last 5 years here. I was skeptical at first when I heard someone was introducing a bill to legalize gay marriage in the state senate (where it has zero chance of passing due to GOP gerrymandering giving them nearly 60% of the seats there), but now it really looks like from these numbers that we could have a majority in favor of gay marriage here in a few years.

-New Jersey: I'm surprised here to that gay marriage support is at nearly 50%, but I guess thinking about it I shouldn't be so surprised, their civil unions with equal rights have probably helped the growth in support for gay marriage here. Unfortunately if Christie gets elected governor in the fall we might be stuck waiting for gay marriage here until even republicans start to come around and support gay marriage like in Vermont.

-West Virginia: At first I thought I had misread chart and it's numbers were really North Carolina, the rapid growth of gay marriage here is really going against the trend of slow growth until support for gay marriage gets higher then that. I was under the impression that West Virginia was like the deep south in terms of race/gay rights issues.

-Florida: The growth of gay marriage support here is really disappointing, I guess all the elderly people who come down there to retire is part of the problem, but still, I would have thought Florida would be higher then that.

-Wyoming, Alaska: Anyone remember several months ago how Nate Silver did some analysis on how big of a margin of victory gay marriage bans got, to predict when a states' voters would reject a gay marriage ban? Well, Alaska and Wyoming were on the list of rejecting a gay marriage ban now, because of stuff like their lower then average church attendance, etc, yet Alaska is just shy of the 40% mark, and Wyoming is only at the 33% mark.

[NYC_SKP]

9. Wyoming, W.Virginia, Alaska, and Montana

All show a greater shift toward support, impressively.

The percentage in support more than doubled.

Of course the lower the starting point the greater the room for improvement, those states at the top are beginning to peak, expect to see slower growth as the number nears pass 50-60 percent support.

Missouri? Texas? Very disappointing. Maybe statistical outliers?

[struggle4progress]

7. .. A recent Brown University poll found 60 percent of Rhode Island voters favor same-sex marriage ..

June 8, 2009
Conservatives say ballot is key to winning marriage fight
by G. Jeffrey MacDonald
Religion News Service
http://pewforum.org/news/display.php?NewsID=18234

[MNBrewer]

8. I always knew Rhode Island should have 50 Senators and 150 Representatives!