A conventional political view of President Obama’s statement of support in favor of gay marriage would suggest that it was a very risky political maneuver. After all, polling has demonstrated repeatedly that most Americans are opposed to gay marriage–and it is always risky for the president to take a minority position in an election year, right?
But in this case, the conventional viewpoint is wrong.
This November, we can basically divide the electorate up into three groups; roughly a third of likely voters will come from each category, more or less. On the left, the liberals will vote for Obama no matter what. For the most part, these people like Obama, are disappointed that he didn’t get more done, but are so scared of how conservative the GOP has gotten that they are willing to give Obama a pass on just about anything. On the right, conservatives dislike and distrust Obama at a very deep level. American conservatives, especially evangelicals, seem willing to believe that Obama is capable of almost any “evil”, from communism to Islam to atheism to radical black nationalism. Then in the middle, the moderates tend to like Obama personally, but are dissatisfied with the economy and are willing to consider alternatives.
So let’s look at how the gay marriage announcement will play in each of these three groups.
Liberals tend to be pro-gay marriage. They have generally greeted Obama’s announcement with jubilation, and my guess is that Obama will see a sharp spike in fund-raising over the next couple of weeks.
Conservatives tend to be anti-gay marriage. But they weren’t going to vote for Obama anyway. In fact, the irony is that most of them already believed that Obama was pro-gay marriage. They are treating this announcement, for the most part, as much-ado-about-nothing.
Moderates tend to be anti-gay marriage, but not strongly so. In other words, when asked (on a poll or on a ballot) they will tend to express discomfort with gay marriage, but the issue doesn’t seem to motivate them strongly to go to the polls, give money, or really affect who they do or don’t support. Again, these are people who tend to like Obama personally–they’re just a little skittish about voting for an incumbent during a bad economy. This announcement won’t change that logic at all.
So, in other words, Obama’s announcement probably gave him more money at the cost of basically no votes. Sounds like a winner to me.
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