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Oct 8, 2012: New Polling From Key Marriage Battlegrounds


If you need some good news right now, look no further than the latest surveys on the freedom to marry. We've got a bunch of new poll numbers this week, and support is up across the board. But we're not out of the woods yet in this election's four key battleground states.

Let's start in Washington state, where a referendum on the state's proposed marriage equality law is just barely squeaking by for now with 56% support according to Survery USA. That's exactly where support was a year ago.

But there's been much more movement in Maine, where another marriage law is up for a vote. A Portland Press Herald survey shows support at 57% to 35% opposed. That's a big jump from last year, when a Public Policy Polling survey showed 51% support to 42% opposed.

Maryland also faces a popular vote on marriage, and we've got a lead there as well. A Baltimore Sun survey shows 49% support the measure to 39% opposed.

Washington, Maine, Maryland, and Minnesota will all be voting on marriage in just four weeks, and although our poll numbers are encouraging, they may not tell the whole story. Surveys tend to overstate support for the freedom to marry, so our narrow lead may be narrower than it looks.

Now is a crucial time to get involved in those races. Visit AFER.org/election2012 for ways that you can help protect marriage equality in those four states.

Let's turn now to states that may face marriage fights in the coming year.

A WPRI survey in Rhode Island shows 56% support the freedom to marry, with 36% opposed. In Illinois, 81% of Catholics support relationship recognition, according to the Pal Simon Public Policy Institute. That includes 41% who support marriage, and 40% for limited civil unions.

In Nebraska, 32% of voters support marriage and 22% are for civil unions, according to an Omaha World-Herald survey. And a new survey from NBC Latino shows that 60% of Latinos support marriage equality. That's slightly above the 54% support that the National Council de La Raza found in April of 2012.

Finally this week an anonymous donor has given two million dollars to the National Organization for Marriage. NOM has kept the identify of many of their donors secret. The organization recently lost a lawsuit over that secrecy and is now required to identify their funding sources in Maine, but so far have not released the information. Meanwhile, NOM has launched a series of anti-gay ads in key battleground states. You can visit AFER.org for a response to the statements in those ads.

Those are the headlines. Remember to visit afer.org/election2012 to help protect the freedom to marry in those key battleground states. And subscribe on YouTube for breaking news on the Prop 8 case.


 

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