The GSE press release has a bit more information to parse. This tidbit is tucked away: 69 percent believe New Jersey will allow same-sex couples to marry, while only 21 percent believe New Jersey would not. 71 percent said, nothing will happen to legislators if they vote for marriage equality ?because New Jersey voters care more about other issues.? Only 21 percent said supportive legislators would not be reelected.
What we are finding is a core opposition of about one in five likely voters. To that core, we can add about eight or nine percent who think a legislator could be tossed out because of their support for marriage equality. Unfortunately, I haven't digested the crosstabs yet to see where those eight percent might be living, but we can make some logical constructs to help understand what we are looking at.
I would guess that this roughly twenty percent who think marriage equality will never come likely believe that because they believe legislators would be thrown out if they did - in other words, the same twenty percent or so show up in both questions in a direct cause-and-effect type of thinking. Since we know that more Democrats support marriage equality than Republicans, we can figure that the majority of those saying legislators would be tossed out are talking about Republican legislators who would face an inner-party revolt if they supported marriage equality.
Well, let's think about this. If a Republican voted for marriage equality and was booted out, would the voters then send a Democrat to replace him or her? If you really hate the idea of "the gays desecratin' marriage", would you be more or less likely to send a representative from the Democratic to replace a Republican who voted against his or her party position?
Yeah. That's what I'm saying. Dems are not going to lose substantial voters and Republicans aren't going to lose any seats by opposing it. It's a push. Some Republicans might lose if they support marriage equality, but they are going to be replaced by Republicans anyway. The only threat is to individual legislators, not the balance of power.
What we can't tell without crosstabs is how many Democrats might be representing those twenty percent of voters - who could be a majority in their legislative district. Just based on numbers, it could only be a very small number - I'm going to say somewhere around two seats in the Senate and maybe four in the Assembly.
But here's the thing about the twenty percenters - they could also be called the deniers of reality. Marriage equality is going to happen. In the very few truly competitive districts, marriage equality is not going to be a make-or-break issue. Remember how much money was thrown away on last year's races trying to scare monger the anti-gay vote?
Marriage equality is not like the issue of taxes. Taxes can be demogogued by someone claiming to cut taxes or by selling bonds and using one-shot deals to fill budget holes. How can you have a one-shot marriage equality deal? You can't. You either say, "Well, why not let it happen?" or you say, "I will do everything I can to stop it!"
My advice for those who simply can't live in a state that allows its gay residents the full rights of citizenship - move to Texas. Marriage equality is coming. There are now no reasons to hold it up in committee. There are now no reason to pussyfoot into a non-existent non-election year. Stick the bill on the Governor's desk and then let him run to DC in January and take all the ill-will with him. |
