A new SurveyUSA poll suggest that protecting traditional marriage is edging out gay marriage.

Conventional wisdom suggest that social issues take a back seat to the fiscal concerns of voters when times are tough.  And these latest results suggest this is holding true this year.  Generic support for traditional marriage runs 60%+ in California.  Yet if SurveyUSA is right, voters seem to be distracted.

The poll shows Prop. 8 winning 48% over 45% who say they will vote no.  Seven percent say they are still undecided.

There are no real surprises based on the various demographics…80% of pro-lifers support Prop. 8, 65% of those who regularly attend religious services support Prop. 8 and 55% of Bay Area voters oppose the initiative.

SurveyUSA is useful research tool, but I don’t trust the results entirely.  Among my concerns is the fact that they interview people who are not registered to vote.  In the case of this poll, 90 of the 800 Californian surveyed were not registered voters.  I find all data interesting, but those 90 respondents skew the results and have no impact on the real outcome on Election Day.  Results for how these non-voters said they felt are not available.

An interesting side note…

While am I sure there is no connection between the results and the ad, it is interesting that the SurveyUSA web page has a banner ad promoting Yes on 8.  I expect that it is just the computer generating ads based on the content of the page.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 21st, 2008 at 12:00 am and is filed under Blog Posts.