Is There A Marriage Backlash

After recent defeats in Maine and New York, poll expert Nate Silver, of the blog FiveThirtyEight, took a look at the numbers to see if they indicate that there's a nationwide backlash against marriage equality.

Silver's conclusion: No. "I don't think there's any evidence of a national backlash against gay marriage," he wrote. "It should be borne in mind that gay marriage is still opposed by a small majority or large plurality of Americans. But there's not really any evidence that the numbers are getting worse; instead, they appear to be v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-ly getting better."

Silver also said that people would be wrong to draw too many comparisons between Maine's Question 1, which repealed marriage equality in that state, and anti-gay-marriage initiatives in other states. "Question 1 was the only gay marriage ballot initiative that did not seek to rewrite its state's constitution," he wrote. "If Question 1 had addressed the same question as Proposition 8 in California, which did alter its state's constitution, it might not have passed."

In an e-mail response to Silver's report, Evan Wolfson, executive director of Freedom to Marry, added that "despite the predictable right-wing spin about the senate's stumble in New York, polls consistently show a majority of New Yorkers support the freedom to marry; the assembly passed the marriage bill three times (twice this year, once the night before the Senate failed); every statewide official (U.S. senators, governor, attorney general, comptroller, etc.) and key mayors are for the freedom to marry; and 24 senators got it right. What we saw this week was no trend or even a New York problem; it was New York senate dysfunction, which will be corrected."

See Nate Silver's full report here.