Tuesday, April 14, 2009

The Spread Of Gay Marriage

TW: As usual Nate Silver comes up with some insight. He projects the pace by which gay marriage will be approved nationally state by state. As I mentioned previously no other cultural right has evolved faster in my lifetime than gay rights. Not fast enough for some for some of our friends, far too fast for some others but fast nevertheless. Silver builds his model on three fairly straightforward metrics and determined other variables are essentially extraneous. The tipping point has probably been reached on this issue, conservatives should look elsewhere for a wedge.

From Nate Silver at 538.com:
"It turns out that you can build a very effective model by including just three variables:
1. The year in which the amendment was voted upon
2. The percentage of adults in 2008 Gallup tracking surveys who said that religion was an important part of their daily lives
3. The percentage of white evangelicals in the state.

...All of the other variables that I looked at -- race, education levels, party registration, etc. -- either did not appear to matter at all, or became redundant once we accounted for religiosity. Nor does it appear to make a significant difference whether the ban affected marriage only, or both marriage and civil unions..."
http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/04/will-iowans-uphold-gay-marriage.html

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