Op-ed By David Fleischer in the Los Angeles Times:
Immediately after Proposition 8 passed, many who supported same-sex marriage tried to make sense of the results. A set of assumptions gained wide acceptance. Some are correct. Most, however, are just plain wrong. And it’s crucial that we know what happened in the last election before launching another attempt to legalize marriage for all.
I recently headed a team that analyzed data from polls conducted by the No on 8 campaign during the run-up to the election. Our analysis sheds new light on what fueled the Proposition 8 victory.
What they found was that our teetering allies (mostly parents with children under 18) got spooked close to election day by ads that preyed on fears of children getting indoctrinated and, I assume, turning gay:
The shift, it turns out, was greatest among parents with children under 18 living at home — many of them white Democrats
The numbers are staggering. In the last six weeks, when both sides saturated the airwaves with television ads, more than 687,000 voters changed their minds and decided to oppose same-sex marriage. More than 500,000 of those, the data suggest, were parents with children under 18 living at home. Because the proposition passed by 600,000 votes, this shift alone more than handed victory to proponents.
I’ll write more about this later today. In the meantime, check out the report online.
