Okay, deep breath now that the June 2008 primary election is out of the way. It's time to look forward to the November 2008 election. With the California Supreme Court decision in place and getting ready to go in effect within two weeks, a ballot initiative has qualified to change the California Constitution in order to expressly limit marriage to being 'between one man and one woman'. The Field Poll organization finished a poll shortly after the Supreme Court decision, and the results surprised even me.
http://www.field.com/fieldpollonline/subscribers/Rls2268.pdf - This is a link directly to the field poll results. It makes for some fascinating reading. Bottom line(s) indicate that the ballot initiative against gay marriage has some serious problems. In California, the general rule is that if an intiative has less support than opposition at the beginning they have a tough battle to win approval. Where a ballot initiative has greater than 50% opposition, the chances of it passing are slightly more than a snowball's chance of surviving entry into hell.
(Field Poll is one of the most reliable polls in California politics)
Their question was:
“Do you favor or oppose changing the California State Constitution to define marriage as
between a man and a woman, thus barring marriage between gay and lesbian couples?”
(among California registered voters)
Results:
Favor 40% Oppose 54% No Opinion: 6%
Those are some pretty solid numbers. (They also show 51% of registered voters favoring marriage laws applying equally to same-sex couples). As you might expect, firm opposition comes from Republican and self-identified Christian voters. What I didn't expect was that Non-Partisan voters support the Supreme Court Decision by 4 points more than Democratic voters. More figures show that Gay Marriage enjoys more than 50% support among people ages 18-49. Not until ages 50-64 does it drop below 50%, and then only to 47%. The largest opposition group comes from those 65 or older, who are the most consistent voters.
That right there would normally give me some considerable cause for concern in an election cycle, if not for one thing: Barack Obama is going to be the Democratic Nominee for President. Senator Obama consistently turns out voters in the 18-49 age group in record high numbers. Those voters turned out in February for him, and in California can be expected to turn out in huge numbers for the General Election. They are also largely opposed to the anti-gay marriage ballot initiative and can be reasonably expected to vote no when they get turned out by the Obama campaign and the California Democratic Party (incidently, the CDP has already endorsed gay marriage in their Platform for 2008 - which yours truly helped write and will be taking a position on the ballot initiative at their June E-board meeting in San Francisco).
At the same time, John McCain's support in California is anemic at best. With an enganged Democratic turnout and a disengaged Republican turnout, this ballot intitiative could very well go down in flames. I'm optimistic we can end up with a spread like: Yes: 44% No: 56%
I've not always been the biggest fan of gay marriage, and I've not been a fan of winning gay marriage through the court systems, but the Perfect Storm brewing here in California is more than enough to satisfy me. As is too often the case, the first battles have to be won in the court system, but I believe in order to achieve true victory, the war must be won at the ballot box.
In 5 months, when the People speak, the war here in California might well and truly be won .
Topic: Love to the California Supreme Court... (Read 6198 times)