Waldo, don’t get dizzy from spinning so fast.

Posted by Jim Hoeft on 31 July 2006 @ 1pm

Jim, I’d like to think that we could keep the level of discourse around here a bit higher than that. If you have an opposing perspective, I hope you’ll share it rather than just lob some snark from afar.

I’m not sure what of my post you take issue with. For all of the talk about “the mainstream” and “out of touch liberals,” it’s pretty surprising to me that only a smidgen over half of Virginians support this ban on gay marriage. It turns out it’s nowhere near the overwhelming support that has been touted.

I don’t understand the “spin” there.

Posted by Waldo Jaquith on 31 July 2006 @ 1pm

Actually, Waldo, the movement is more perceptible than you imagine. Asked the same question last summer as Mason-Dixon just asked, Virginia voters answered Yes in roughly the same numbers (within margin of error) but No votes have grown significantly since. So, even, where, as here, the results are skewed by asking a question using only the first line of the amendment, the momentum in this election is moving toward NO.

In addition, The Commonwealth Coalition’s poll, on our website at http://www.voteNOva.org, that actually asked 800 likely voters (lower margin of error, 2.7% vs. 4%) the question that is on the ballot … found only 45% in support … a small plurality over the 40% who said no … in the words of the pollsters, “a virtual dead heat.”

Show me any other poll in any other state where the issue has been on the ballot that showed Yes below 50% at any time.

Here’s the question for today. Why didn’t Bob Gibson tell his readers that the question asked in the poll was not the question printed in text of his story? He printed the actual ballot language in his story but wrote about results of a poll question based only on the first sentence. Misleading? I think so.

Posted by VoteNOva on 31 July 2006 @ 2pm

Here’s the question for today. Why didn’t Bob Gibson tell his readers that the question asked in the poll was not the question printed in text of his story? He printed the actual ballot language in his story but wrote about results of a poll question based only on the first sentence.

I suspect he didn’t notice the difference between the poll language and the ballot language. I certainly didn’t.

Posted by Waldo Jaquith on 31 July 2006 @ 3pm

Actually, the Daily Press, one of the Virginia papers that sponsored the Mason-Dixon poll, had a quote from M-D managing director Brad Coken on why people were only asked about the ban on marriage, and not on the ENTIRE ballot question.

His response? “Coker said he chose the first sentence because he considered the rest of the language ’superfluous’.” How appalling!

(Here’s a link to the source of that quote: http://www.dailypress.com/news/local/dp-86759sy0jul31,0,3143244.story?coll=dp-news-local-final

Posted by K on 31 July 2006 @ 3pm

Mason-Dixon should lose all credibility for that. Obviously the voters don’t find the rest of the language superfluous, since their support falls 10 points when they read it.

It should tell us something that Marshall/Newman tried to keep that language from appearing on the ballot, and that the amendment’s proponents keep insisting that it “only defines marriage” (even as they hilariously claim that they aren’t trying to hide the second paragraph).

We can defeat this amendment, and it would be purely stupid not to do everything in our power to do so. The stakes are enormous (witness the hate crime this weekend in Loudoun, which is inseparable from the rhetoric coming from the anti-gay right in our community), the benefit would be enormous, and all we have to do is to get voters to read the whole thing.

Posted by David on 1 August 2006 @ 10am