A majority of Republicans across the country now support some form of legal recognition for gay couples. 12% are in favor of full marriage rights, 39% support civil unions, and only 48% believe there should be no legal rights for gay couples at all.
There are some major divides on the issue within the party:
-57% of Tea Party Republicans oppose any legal recognition for gay couples but that's less than a third of the party's voters. With the majority who don't consider themselves part of the Tea Party only 40% oppose all legal recognition with 16% supporting outright marriage and 44% going for civil unions.
-Opinions on rights for gay couples vary dramatically along income lines. 57% who make less than $30,000 a year and 53% who make between $30,000 and $50,000 a year oppose all legal recognition. But with those making over $100,000 only 33% oppose any legal recognition and 24% support full marriage rights.
-It's customary to see large age divides on gay rights, not just among Republicans but among all voters. That is the case here- 56% of GOP voters under 30 support some form of legal recognition for gay couples and that drops to 54% in the 30 to 45 age bracket, 50% in the 46 t0 65 group, and 48% with the over 65 crowd.
To put the 51% of Republicans who support legal recognition for gay couples into perspective, that's higher than the 45% who approve of the job John Boehner's doing as Speaker of the House. The times they are a changing...
These numbers are a synthesis of opinions among Republicans on gay marriage on 3 national polls we did for Daily Kos in March, April, and May. Over 1,000 GOP voters were interviewed between those three polls.
Full results here
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7 comments:
Did you also poll 2012 matchups in West Virginia and if you did when will you release them ?
I've said it before and I'll say it again. You're posting misleading headlines about the gay unions thing. The poll finds that a mere 12% of Republicans support gay marriage and you specifically state that civil unions is not the equivalent of gay marriage. This is nothing new and and the real news is that nearly 90% of Republicans oppose gay marrigae.
I wonder how those who support partial rights break down when asked to chooses between full marriage rights/no rights. I think instituting civil unions for gay couples is wrong in the same way "separate but equal" schools are. And if the goal is to protect traditional marriage, civil unions as a policy has spectacularly backfired in France, as about 50% of births there are out-of-wedlock now. Heterosexual couples in France seem to be procrastinating on the weight of marriage by entering into civil unions originally meant for homosexuals.
@2nd Anonymous. Can you read?
The headline is "Most Republicans support recognition for gay couples" NOT "Most Republicans support gay marriage" ! THAT IS NOT MISLEADING.
What is so hard to understand about that? Civil unions and marriage both fall under the title of "recognition for gay couples."
Since, together, support for both of those options is 51%, aka a majority aka "most," there is NOTHING misleading. If the headline said "Most Republicans support gay marriage," that would be a different story. But that's not what it says, so your argument is just plain wrong.
So stop bashing PPP saying that they're misleading. They're NOT.
It's a shame that President Obama is to the right of 12% of Republican voters -- including Dick Cheney -- on this issue.
And it will be interesting to see how the 2016 GOP candidates feel about this issue. I have a feeling by that point there will be mostly a division of pro-equality and pro-civil union candidates.
"And it will be interesting to see how the 2016 GOP candidates feel about this issue. I have a feeling by that point there will be mostly a division of pro-equality and pro-civil union candidates."
I wouldn't bet more than about $2 on that prospect.
I'm hopeful that by 2016 support for gay marriage and the legalization of marijuana will be so high that mainstream candidates (at least the Democrats) will include these stances as a part of their platform.
In more of a long shot... it'd be nice if President Obama changed his tune on these topics sometime during his 2nd term (if not before the 2012 election which seems very unlikely.)
Long term strong majority support for gay marriage and the legalization of marijuana seems very likely.
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