The Message for Today.
More on Prop 8, but leading into the personal thing I referred to earlier.
An article in the San Francisco Chronicle examines the Catholic-Evangelical-Mormon alliance to pass Proposition 8. Three things.
First, that guy? The one with the funny hat? I know him; he's a friend of the family. I probably should have realized that he'd be at the center of that alliance (currently archbishop of San Francisco, previously bishop of Salt lake City), but I guess I put it out of my mind.
I may have to skip the dinner the next time he's in town.
Second, math.The last Field Poll, conducted a week before the election, showed that weekly churchgoers increased their support in the final week from 72 percent to 84 percent. Catholic support increased from 44 percent to 64 percent - a jump that accounted for 6 percent of the total California electorate and equivalent to the state's entire African American population combined.
The shift in Catholics alone more than accounted for Prop. 8's 5 percent margin of victory.
The math here is terribly screwed up. Now there's the obvious difficulty with comparing a phone poll to an exit poll. I've already talked about some of the problems with assuming exit poll results to be (ahem) gospel, but since Catholics are a larger, more evenly distributed group in California than African-Americans, we'll take them as accurate-ish.
Next, I'm not sure where in the Field Poll report the reporter is pulling his numbers on religious attendance.
(Also, I can't make any sense of "equivalent to the state's entire African American population combined." Based on the NEP exit polls, the total number of Catholics who voted yes is kinda close to (that is, around 87% of) the total number of African-Americans in California, but that doesn't seem to fit at all with what the rest of the sentence is saying. I think the reporter just saw 6% and remembered that number from somewhere else.)
Most importantly, the reporter fails to account for the undecided voters in the Field Poll. According to that survey, one week before the election, 8% of Catholics likely to vote hadn't made a decision on Prop 8. Because of this, it's more useful to look at the shift in no votes than yes votes. According to the NEP exit polls, 36% of Catholics voted no on Prop 8. In the Field Poll, 48% of Catholics likely to vote would have voted no if the election had been held one week earlier.
Two things there: One week before the election, more likely-to-vote Catholics had decided to vote against Prop 8 than had decided to support it. One week later, the net result is that a quarter of them had changed their minds.
While the overwhelming break of undecideds to the Yes camp can't be ignored, the real "shift" here is (assuming that Catholics were 30% of the electorate, as the NEP exit poll reported) about 400 thousand votes, 3.6% of the total. That doesn't cover the 500 thousand vote difference in the actually tally.
But since we're looking at people who changed their votes, we aren't just looking at votes added to the yes column, we're looking at votes removed from the no column. Assuming these polls are accurate, enough Catholics changed their mind in the last week of the election to determine the fate of the Proposition.
And while we can focus on Catholics in this case representing the slim margin, it's important to remember that in September, 55% of voters opposed Prop 8. That's a majority. I've seen people say that fifty-two percent of California are bigots or bad people, but if the vote on Prop 8 is your standard of hatred and bigotry, then you've got to wonder how so many people became hateful bigots in just two months. These are good people who supported gay marriage. They changed their minds. And I've seen people argue that it's because these people are sheep mindlessly following the will of a bigot, but that's too simplistic. These are good people were convinced to do the wrong thing. If we're going to make this right, we can't focus on who were convinced and who did the convincing; we need to think about what was said that was so damn convincing.
The most interesting thing about the article gets to why that may have been. The details lead into the personal post I've been trying to write for a little while, so consider this just a preview. [Rev. Roland] Stringfellow, who organized No on 8 religious events in the East Bay and San Francisco, said the No on 8 campaign's talking points initially didn't have language to address religious groups. In addition, he said, No on 8 campaigners were told by strategists not to discuss children, an issue that has particular significance for family-oriented religious groups.
Forget about "family-oriented religious groups," the children were on the mind of all Californians. Family was on the mind of all Californians. I've heard people talk about how the No on 8 ads were short on people of color-and often short on gay people-but they were very short on children. In short, they were short on families; the families with children and the families without.
The message for today: Marriage is family.
More tomorrow.
An article in the San Francisco Chronicle examines the Catholic-Evangelical-Mormon alliance to pass Proposition 8. Three things.
First, that guy? The one with the funny hat? I know him; he's a friend of the family. I probably should have realized that he'd be at the center of that alliance (currently archbishop of San Francisco, previously bishop of Salt lake City), but I guess I put it out of my mind.
I may have to skip the dinner the next time he's in town.
Second, math.The last Field Poll, conducted a week before the election, showed that weekly churchgoers increased their support in the final week from 72 percent to 84 percent. Catholic support increased from 44 percent to 64 percent - a jump that accounted for 6 percent of the total California electorate and equivalent to the state's entire African American population combined.
The shift in Catholics alone more than accounted for Prop. 8's 5 percent margin of victory.
The math here is terribly screwed up. Now there's the obvious difficulty with comparing a phone poll to an exit poll. I've already talked about some of the problems with assuming exit poll results to be (ahem) gospel, but since Catholics are a larger, more evenly distributed group in California than African-Americans, we'll take them as accurate-ish.
Next, I'm not sure where in the Field Poll report the reporter is pulling his numbers on religious attendance.
(Also, I can't make any sense of "equivalent to the state's entire African American population combined." Based on the NEP exit polls, the total number of Catholics who voted yes is kinda close to (that is, around 87% of) the total number of African-Americans in California, but that doesn't seem to fit at all with what the rest of the sentence is saying. I think the reporter just saw 6% and remembered that number from somewhere else.)
Most importantly, the reporter fails to account for the undecided voters in the Field Poll. According to that survey, one week before the election, 8% of Catholics likely to vote hadn't made a decision on Prop 8. Because of this, it's more useful to look at the shift in no votes than yes votes. According to the NEP exit polls, 36% of Catholics voted no on Prop 8. In the Field Poll, 48% of Catholics likely to vote would have voted no if the election had been held one week earlier.
Two things there: One week before the election, more likely-to-vote Catholics had decided to vote against Prop 8 than had decided to support it. One week later, the net result is that a quarter of them had changed their minds.
While the overwhelming break of undecideds to the Yes camp can't be ignored, the real "shift" here is (assuming that Catholics were 30% of the electorate, as the NEP exit poll reported) about 400 thousand votes, 3.6% of the total. That doesn't cover the 500 thousand vote difference in the actually tally.
But since we're looking at people who changed their votes, we aren't just looking at votes added to the yes column, we're looking at votes removed from the no column. Assuming these polls are accurate, enough Catholics changed their mind in the last week of the election to determine the fate of the Proposition.
And while we can focus on Catholics in this case representing the slim margin, it's important to remember that in September, 55% of voters opposed Prop 8. That's a majority. I've seen people say that fifty-two percent of California are bigots or bad people, but if the vote on Prop 8 is your standard of hatred and bigotry, then you've got to wonder how so many people became hateful bigots in just two months. These are good people who supported gay marriage. They changed their minds. And I've seen people argue that it's because these people are sheep mindlessly following the will of a bigot, but that's too simplistic. These are good people were convinced to do the wrong thing. If we're going to make this right, we can't focus on who were convinced and who did the convincing; we need to think about what was said that was so damn convincing.
The most interesting thing about the article gets to why that may have been. The details lead into the personal post I've been trying to write for a little while, so consider this just a preview. [Rev. Roland] Stringfellow, who organized No on 8 religious events in the East Bay and San Francisco, said the No on 8 campaign's talking points initially didn't have language to address religious groups. In addition, he said, No on 8 campaigners were told by strategists not to discuss children, an issue that has particular significance for family-oriented religious groups.
Forget about "family-oriented religious groups," the children were on the mind of all Californians. Family was on the mind of all Californians. I've heard people talk about how the No on 8 ads were short on people of color-and often short on gay people-but they were very short on children. In short, they were short on families; the families with children and the families without.
The message for today: Marriage is family.
More tomorrow.