{"id":40802236095,"date":"2011-08-03T19:31:00","date_gmt":"2011-08-03T23:31:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/2011\/08\/03\/does-nj-support-or-oppose-gay-marriage-it-depends\/"},"modified":"2021-01-25T11:22:06","modified_gmt":"2021-01-25T16:22:06","slug":"does-nj-support-or-oppose-gay-marriage-it-depends","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/2011\/08\/03\/does-nj-support-or-oppose-gay-marriage-it-depends\/","title":{"rendered":"Does NJ Support or Oppose Gay Marriage? It Depends."},"content":{"rendered":"

Cross-posted at PolitickerNJ<\/strong><\/i><\/p>\n

A new PPP poll shows that a clear majority of New Jersey voters oppose <\/strong>gay marriage.<\/p>\n

\u201cHang on a minute,\u201d you say.\u00a0 \u201cAll the media reports I saw on that poll say that New Jersey supports gay marriage.\u00a0 Are you off your rocker, Murray?\u201d<\/p>\n

No, I\u2019m not.\u00a0 I just read the entire press release sent out by the pollster.\u00a0 I found information in the very first paragraph that could lead a reasonable person \u2013 or at least an astute reporter \u2013 to conclude that this poll shows that most New Jerseyans do not support the recognition of gay marriage.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s why.\u00a0 The poll asked two questions.\u00a0 The first question asked simply if \u201csame-sex marriage should be legal or illegal?\u201d\u00a0 And being a basically fair-minded lot, more New Jersey poll participants sided with making it legal by a not overly wide 47% to 42% margin.<\/p>\n

However, the pollster followed that with a different question \u2013 one more reflective of the reality that exists in New Jersey right now.\u00a0 If the choice was between gay marriage, civil unions and no recognition at all, the public evenly splits between gay marriage (41%) and civil unions (40%).<\/p>\n

If you add the group who choose civil unions to the 17% of those polled who oppose any kind of legal standing for same sex couples, you arrive at a sizable 57% who oppose gay marriage when civil unions are an option, as they are in New Jersey.<\/p>\n

To its credit, the polling firm, Public Policy Polling, not only asked both questions but reported the results for both in the first paragraph of their press release.\u00a0 However, they presented this information under a headline claiming there is unequivocal public support for gay marriage in New Jersey.\u00a0 And they semantically underplayed the apparent contradiction in the two questions\u2019 results.<\/p>\n

Hmmm, I wonder if this Democratic polling firm may have an agenda?\u00a0 Fair enough.\u00a0 They did clearly show all the results of their poll, after all.<\/p>\n

The real problem is that the media blithely went along with the storyline fed to them by the polling firm \u2013 even when contradictory evidence was put right in front of their eyes. See here<\/a>, or here (with a blatantly inaccurate headline claiming \u201ceven Republicans support same-sex marriage\u201d), and here<\/a> (which bizarrely interprets 41% as a \u201cmajority\u201d \u2013 no wonder we\u2019re falling behind the rest of the world in math), and even here<\/a>.\u00a0 <\/strong>[Note that the text of at least one of these online articles \u2013 although not the headline \u2013 has been modified after I contacted reporters about this.<\/em>]<\/p>\n

Usually when a poll has contradictory information or the pollster has an agenda, a critical observer really has to do some work to uncover the red flags.\u00a0 That means reading deeply into the background information that a pollster is willing to provide, as one New Jersey columnist did recently.\u00a0 Many times you don\u2019t even get this information to review (in which case, don\u2019t report the poll at all!)<\/p>\n

For this poll on gay marriage, though, the conflicting information was presented with a flashing neon sign.\u00a0 Yet, no reporter bothered to say, \u201cHow would I report these results if all I had was the question results without the pollster\u2019s interpretation?\u201d\u00a0 If they had, I bet the headlines would have been less clear-cut about where the public stands on this issue.<\/p>\n

And that would have reflected the reality that public opinion on gay marriage is not clear-cut.\u00a0 As I wrote over a year ago<\/a>, nearly a decade of polling on this subject in New Jersey and elsewhere shows that opinion on this issue is malleable.\u00a0 The current poll underscores this fact.<\/p>\n

When Democrats in the poll were asked the up or down marriage question, 64% supported it.\u00a0 And when they were presented with the civil union option, a full 59% stood by their original position.\u00a0 Republicans were similarly steadfast \u2013 only 23% supported same sex marriage in the limited option question and a similar 20% said the same when civil unions were added to the equation (although it\u2019s worth noting that most Republicans do in fact support civil unions).<\/p>\n

Independents, on the other hand, were swayed by the context of the question.\u00a0 On the straight up or down marriage question they divided 46% for to 35% against.\u00a0 But when civil unions were given as an option, support for same sex marriage declined by a sizable 13 points to just 33%.<\/p>\n

Bottom line:\u00a0 This poll provides clear evidence of the ‘softness” in public opinion on gay marriage in New Jersey.\u00a0 About 4-in-10 are solidly for it and 4-in-10 are solidly against it, but the remainder are liable to change their opinion.\u00a0 And with this changeable group rests the majority.\u00a0 Therefore, as the public debate on this issue resumes, public opinion will continue to shift.<\/p>\n

There.\u00a0 that wasn’t so hard, was it?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cross-posted at PolitickerNJ A new PPP poll shows that a clear majority of New Jersey voters oppose gay marriage. \u201cHang on a minute,\u201d you say.\u00a0 \u201cAll the media reports I saw on that poll say that New Jersey supports gay marriage.\u00a0 Are you off your rocker, Murray?\u201d No, I\u2019m not.\u00a0 I just read the entire […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":939,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40802236095","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40802236095","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/939"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40802236095"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40802236095\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40802237085,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40802236095\/revisions\/40802237085"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40802236095"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40802236095"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40802236095"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}