CU poll: Gay marriage supporters tend to be young, educated and watch CNN

By Blaine P. Friedlander Jr.

As gay couples rush to the altar and the White House backs a constitutional amendment prohibiting same-sex marriages, a poll by some Cornell researchers shows that voters who favor gay marriage tend to be young, educated and earn a comfortable living. And they tend to watch CNN.

Voters who oppose gay marriage tend to be older, less educated and not as wealthy, and to vote Republican, according to the poll. And they tend to watch Fox News.

Scheufele

"You are what you watch," said Dietram Scheufele, Cornell associate professor of communication, in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. "Television news is cultivating our belief system, and our perceptions of the issue are not coming from newspapers, but rather from cable television news."

The poll results are from a national survey conducted by students in Scheufele's survey course last semester. In collaboration with Cornell's Survey Research Institute, in the School of Industrial and Labor Relations, the students polled more than 800 registered voters in a national survey conducted by telephone. The survey had an error rate of plus or minus 3 percent.

Scheufele, who examines how the news media affects perceptions and ideas among the public, found that among voters who considered CNN their cable television news source of choice, about 31.2 percent favored gay marriage. Only 15.7 percent of Fox News viewers favored gay marriage. About 25.5 percent of those voters who preferred other cable news channels, such as CNBC and MSNBC, favored gay marriage.

Why are the cable news channels so focused on gay marriage, when those who favor it are in the minority in the general population, no matter what news they watch? The main reason, said Scheufele, "is the polarizing nature of the issue. Most people feel strongly either way, and very few have no opinion." In addition, Scheufele believes that gay marriage is a "totally morally loaded issue," unlike such issues as national security and the economy. Voters tend to draw on their gut feelings, he said. "This is not a rational issue."

The poll showed that women (29 percent of those surveyed) tended to support gay marriage more often than men (22 percent), and there was more support for same-sex marriage among those with college backgrounds and graduate degrees. About 13 percent of high school-educated people supported gay marriage, compared with people with some college education (28 percent) or a graduate degree (38 percent).

Only about 18.4 percent of voters over 56 years old lent their support to gay marriage, while those 35 years old or younger were more likely to support it (35 percent). About 28 percent of voters ages 36 to 55 indicated they were in favor of gay marriage.

Household income also played a role. Exactly one-third of voters with households earning $70,001 or more annually supported gay marriage, while those earning between $30,001 and $70,000 had a 24 percent support rate; and 27 percent of those earning $30,000 or less annually supported it.

Religious observance also was a factor, according to the survey. About 34.5 percent of those voters who attend church less than once a month supported gay marriage. Those voters who attend church once a week or more opposed gay marriage by almost 87 percent.

Registered Republicans (88.2 percent) polled strongly against gay marriage, while 71.5 percent of independent voters and 59.4 percent of Democrats opposed it. (About 40.6 percent of the Democrats were supporters.)

Among those who called themselves "liberals," about 48.8 percent favored gay marriage. Voters who considered themselves "moderate" had a 23.6 percent rate in favor, and about 10.8 percent of voters who labeled themselves "conservative" supported it.