Via Box Turtle Bulletin: Still having fun, Maggie?

Happiness is when reality exceeds your expectations. Apparently the National Organization “for” Marriage has officially lowered its expectations.

Over on their blog, NOM is happily touting a new poll in a post called, New Quinnipiac Poll: Majority Does NOT Support SSM:

The latest Quinnipiac poll:

Would you support or oppose a law in your state that would allow same-sex couples to get married?
Oppose: 48%
Support: 46%
Don’t Know/NA: 6%
Among Republicans:
Oppose: 72%
Support: 24%
Don’t Know/NA: 4%

Not so long ago, they’d have despaired at a slim margin like that. But with poll over poll over poll showing majority support for marriage equality, these numbers are the happiest news they can find.

That’s almost sad.

Heh, heh, heh.

You have to wonder, though:  How happy should they be? I hate spoiling their fun…but if you insist:


This is not the headline they want.
They wrote the headline, Majority Does Not Support SSM, but they’d much rather have written, Majority Opposes SSM. That’s one of their favorite talking points. Guess, they’ll have to retire it — even the polls they promote don’t let them say it.

So sorry, NOM.

The trend is against them.
They left a bunch of stuff out of their report. For instance, Quinnipiac’s comparison of these results to the ones they got two years ago:


Does that look like cause for a big NOM victory party?

So sorry.

They can’t even claim with confidence that they’re ahead.
Quinnipiac’s margin of error is ± 2%. That means the true results are somewhere in the range of 50-46 for NOM or 48-46 against NOM. Let me adjust the graphic to account for this margin of error. The wider lines indicate the 4% range for each result.


See how the lines now overlap? Didn’t used to happen.

So sorry.

They’re losing support in their base.

NOM gave us the Republican numbers for 2011, but not for 2009. Let me rectify that.

Republicans/SSM	April 2009	July 2011
Oppose	80%	72%
Support	17%	24%
Don’t Know/NA	2%	4%

NOM, you can’t even hold onto your own base.

So sorry.

A solid majority thinks the federal government should recognize same-sex marriage.

Federal SSM Recognition?	April 2009	July 2011
Oppose	39%	34%
Support	54%	59%
Don’t Know/NA	6%	7%

Oops — NOM, looks like you lost that one a couple years back. And you’re losing even worse now.

So sorry.

Did I say happiness is when reality exceeds your expectations? Then I’m happy, because I never expected NOM to view these numbers as good news. NOM has lowered its expectation and revealed it to the world. Maggie Gallagher recently said people should fight same-sex marriage because “Winning is fun.” I’m wondering Maggie, was New York fun? Were these numbers fun? Because writing this sure was fun for me.

Oh, I shouldn’t gloat.

So sorry.

Make the jump here to read the full article