Poll: 60 percent of likely voters back gay marriage

With the U.S. Supreme Court poised to rule this spring on whether same-sex couples nationwide should have the right to marry, a gay rights organization on Friday released a new survey showing support for gay marriage at 60 percent among likely voters in the 2016 election.

The Human Rights Campaign — a Washington, D.C.-based tax-exempt nonprofit that works to “achieve equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans” — says its survey shows conservatives who claim the country will balk at court-imposed marriage rights are out of step with public opinion.


The poll was conducted late last month by the Democratic polling firm Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research. According to the survey, 60 percent of likely voters say they favor “allowing gay and lesbian couples to marry legally,” while 37 percent oppose allowing gays to marry.

That’s only slightly higher than nonpartisan public surveys, which show majorities backing same-sex marriage in recent years. In 2014, polls generally showed support for gay marriage in the mid-50s, and 56 percent of Americans in an ABC News/Washington Post poll in October 2014 support “the Supreme Court action … that allows gay marriages to go forward in several more states.”

While opponents are still more likely to feel strongly than supporters, the sheer number of those backing gay marriage overwhelms them. Three-fourths of opponents say they feel strongly, but they account for only 28 percent of all likely voters. Forty-three percent of likely voters say they are strong supporters of marriage rights.

Poll respondents were also asked to react to a quote from Tony Perkins, president of the conservative Family Research Council, who speculated that a ruling from the high court permitting same-sex marriage across the country could be met with a “revolt” or “revolution.” According to a memorandum from pollsters Anna Greenberg and David Walker, 70 percent of voters disagreed with that statement, including 57 percent of Republicans.

“In some of our previous reports to HRC, sometimes in the face of stubborn anti-marriage majority, we have noted the movement toward equality over time and said this question is not a matter of ‘if’ but ‘when,’” Greenberg and Walker wrote in their memo. “For voters, ‘when’ is ‘now.’”

The poll was conducted Jan. 25-31, surveying 1,000 likely voters. The margin of error is plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.

Earlier this week, Alabama became the 37th state to allow same-sex marriages after the Supreme Court declined to stop a court order that threw out the state’s laws prohibiting gay marriage. Justice Clarence Thomas — who has voted against same-sex marriage in prior cases — was one of only two justices to dissent on that question, writing that allowing marriages to proceed there “may well be seen as a signal of the Court’s intended resolution” of the overall case.