Maine, California and the age factorBy Tim Redmond
Lots of people are analyzing what happened in Maine, and the fight goes on.
But I think Paul Hogarth, who just got back from Maine, hit on the most important (sadly) point:
The single most important factor in the politics of same-sex marriage is demographics. The younger the voters, the more likely they support same-sex marriage. Maine has the third-oldest population in the country; California has the seventh youngest.
I hate to be dissin' old folks (I'm getting closer and closer to that particular demographic myself) but it's the hard, cold reality: Get young people to vote in large numbers, and we win. In fact, in some ways this debate is already over -- in ten years, passing a same-sex marriage measure will be far easier, and most states will have already taken that step. The demographic train only goes one way.
Which is of limited confort to people who want to get married now, not in ten years -- but it's important to understand, especially when we debate when to go back to the ballot in CA.
I'm for trying again in 2010, with a better-run campaign that doesn't try to hide queer people from the voters. I also recognize that 2012 will be easier than 2010, and 2014 will be easier than 2012, and 2020 will be a slam dunk. So I don't buy the argument that you can only go back to the voters once.
We need to start a statewide effort to register young voters and activate them in huge numbers. They're out there, and thousands upon thousands turn 18 every day. When they go to the polls in larger numbers than their grandparents, then this battle is over.
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Comments (4)
Thanks, Tim, but actually Maine is THE oldest state in the country according to the US Census (http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/GCTTable?-ds_name=PEP_2007_EST&-mt_name=PEP_2007_EST_GCTT2R_US9SA&-format=US-9|US-9S|US-9Sa|US-9Sb|US-9Sc|US-9Sd|US-9Se|US-9Sf|US-9Sg&-CONTEXT=gct&-geo_id=)
The one bright spot in this election was what happened at the University of Maine -- where not only did 81% of students vote "NO" on Question 1, but they also matched the voter turnout from Obama. Put it another way, statewide we saw a 40% increase in voter turnout over the 2005 election (i.e., the last time Maine had an anti-gay referendum on the ballot in an off-year.) But I checked the numbers, and the town of Orono (where UMaine is located) saw a 77.7% increase in turnout.
The kids really came out for us in Maine ... There just weren't enough of them. Reminds me of 2004, when we saw the biggest youth turnout in a presidential election since 1972. Problem is, evangelical voters were just as motivated (if not moreso) to vote for Bush -- so that effectively canceled it out.
Posted by Paul Hogarth | November 6, 2009 03:40 PM
Go for the ballot again when the poll numbers say that you have enough of a cushion of support to be able to withstand the kind of attacks that we've been unable to fend off so far.
The Maine Governor ran opposed to same sex marriage. After Prop 8, he had a change of heart and signed a bill. Maine has voter review of legislation. Do you think those two might have been connected?
We can probably guess that Herrera and Newsom did not check the statewide polls before legalizing same sex marriage in 2004. it appears that nobody in Maine gave the poll numbers serious consideration before moving forward with a process that would likely result in a ballot measure.
It is not so much as you can only go back to the voters once. You can go back until you can win if you can sustain that kind of a campaign. The problem is that repeated failures reinforce the message that we're second class citizens.
We need to take the keys away from those who have been driving us off of cliffs, and get a fresh set of eyes on this problem of people playing amateur hour with my civil rights.
-marc
Posted by marcos | November 6, 2009 10:36 PM
Demographics have nothing to do with it. If progressives lose a campaign we intended to win, it is because we used the wrong strategy and lost the damned thing.
Let's focus on how we are going to win the next fight, not on what factors totally beyond our control supposedly did us in.
The fault dear Brutus is not in our stars, but in ourselves...
Posted by Eric Brooks | November 8, 2009 01:44 AM
Eric, the mid-term demographic trends are in our favor. However, timing is critical under those conditions. The arc of a political campaign that begins, either through legislation or an executive act, when one is below a majority hard support needs to be carefully calibrated so that it is resolved at the ballot box once the issue is above the threshold.
Had Newsom waited for three years, until 2007, to do same sex marriage, we'd have seen the Prop 8 electoral campaign crest in 2011 instead of 2008, and the arc of demographics would have been more on our side. But that would need to realize that the campaign is not the election, rather the electoral campaign must be the visible part of the iceberg, supported by a massive structure below in order to float.
That said, the self-appointed leadership of the same sex marriage campaigns has always been convinced of its own policy correctness and has created a condition in its collective group think that diminished the strength opposition, and overestimated their own chance of success.
Until the intellectual authorship of the same sex marriage campaign begins to look like multicultural California, or the cultural and religious complexion of most all white Maine, with people of color and folks from the diverse regions here or traditional Catholic Mainers from down east, then we're going to get our gonads cut off again and again.
You can't parachute in outsiders on controversial and personal matters like this, that's just stupid organizing.
Until then, those self appointed leaders with too much money and time on their hands will continue to use our community as a battering ram to further their project irrespective of political realities on the ground, as the only thing the comfortable risk is their pride. And they will recover their pride by continuing to blame everyone but themselves for their unbroken string of losses at the ballot box.
-marc
Posted by marcos | November 8, 2009 10:00 AM