Polls against gay marriage

Both polls sampled likely voters and had margins of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points. He said, it's too early to say whether the poll is a statistical outlier or represents a shift in the public mood over the last year, as same-sex marriage has garnered considerable media attention due to a federal lawsuit in Detroit and significant court rulings in Michigan and other states, he said. It's possible some Michiganders have pulled back on the same-sex marriage issue in the face of that publicity, Porn said. It's also possible the most recent poll had a somewhat skewed result because it drew a lower proportion of presidential election voters — who tend to be younger than those who vote in mid-term elections — than the poll he conducted last year.

Despite last month's Massachusetts Supreme Court ruling that the state could not deny gays and lesbians the right to marry, Americans continue to oppose laws allowing homosexual couples to marry or to form civil unions -- and the number opposing gay marriage is higher now than it was in July before the Massachusetts action. The public has reversed itself on the overall question of same-sex relations. Half now think homosexual relations between consenting adults should not be legal -- a reversal of opinion from the summer, when a majority of Americans thought they should be legal. More than half now favor an amendment to the U.

After years of generally steady increases, opinions about same-sex marriage are mostly unchanged since While attitudes about same-sex marriage are changed little from two years ago, support has increased substantially over the past two decades. The Pew Research Center survey, conducted March among 1, adults finds that Republicans and Democrats remain deeply divided over legal marriage for gays and lesbians — though support has increased significantly in both parties over the past 15 years. Support for same-sex marriage also has increased among nearly all demographic groups over the past 15 years, including across generations and by religious affiliation :. Continue exploring attitudes about same-sex marriage.

Do polls overstate support for gay marriage? And can Congress tackle immigration? Chris Stirewalt and guests discuss. Does the power of states to regulate marriage extend to the ability to prohibit people of the same sex from exchanging vows?