Prior to the election, Gallup predicted that LGBT voters, overwhelmingly pro-Obama, had the potential to tip the election decisively in the president's favor.
Well, a new analysis of election data appears to validate that theory.
From a New York Times article called "Gay Voters Seen As Crucial In Obama's Victory" UPDATE: the article is now called "Gay Support Buoyed Obama":
Mr. Obama's more than three-to-one edge in exit polls among the 5 percent of voters who identified as gay, lesbian or bisexual was more than enough to give him the ultimate advantage, according to the study, by Gary J. Gates of the Williams Institute at the U.C.L.A. School of Law, in conjunction with Gallup. The results are consistent with earlier research on the size and political beliefs of gay voters.
…
As with Latinos and Asian-Americans, the number of voters who identify
as gay appears to be growing. Only 1.9 percent of Americans over 65
identify as gay, lesbian or bisexual, according to the Gallup survey, while 3.2 percent of those between 30 and 49 and 6.4 percent of those between 18 and 29 do.
Despite all evidence and reality, J. Hogan Gidley, a communications director for failed presidential candidate Rick Santorum, told the Times that the Republican Party can't move to the center on marriage because they'll lose die-hard conservatives.
"I think it would be a mistake for the party to abandon its moral values,” he said. He later reduced the debate to a battle of "buzzwords:" "We've lost the buzzword battle… that marriage is a 'right.'"
R. Clarke Cooper from the Log Cabin Republicans told the paper the GOP's platform is "a good plan," but is too often drowned out by "the cacophony and the noise that is perceived as anti-immigrant, or anti-L.G.B.T., or anti-women." So, basically the platform itself. [Correction: Cooper wrote in to say that he supports the GOP's small-government agenda, not the platform.]
