Maine's Question 1

[Tender Branson]

PPP:

48% YES
48% NO

http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/pdf/PPP_Release_ME_1020.pdf

[Eraserhead]

PPP:

48% YES
48% NO

http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/pdf/PPP_Release_ME_1020.pdf

Ugh. Not good.

[Vepres]

PPP:

48% YES
48% NO

http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/pdf/PPP_Release_ME_1020.pdf

Ugh. Not good.

Undecideds will probably break towards no, just my gut feeling.

[Lunar]

PPP sux

[Dan the Roman]

PPP:

48% YES
48% NO

http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/pdf/PPP_Release_ME_1020.pdf

Ugh. Not good.

Undecideds will probably break towards no, just my gut feeling.

Hard to say. What I will say though is that I am skeptical of their likely voter screen. I worked on the last Gay Rights Iniaitive in Maine in 2005 as well as the general elections in 2004 and 2006, and from what i recall there is simply no comparison in terms of the GOTV operations of the Democratic leaning groups, especially the Maine Gay Rights groups. Because of early voting, they spend the three weeks leading up to the election bagging large numbers of voters, and the combination of same-day registration and early voting tends to make it incredibly easy to mobilize groups with a low-chance of turning out, like college students.

While I am willing to believe many college age students may well have said they were unsure or might not vote when called, most will in fact vote, when all of their friends go down to vote on the iniative. Peer pressure in this regard is a very powerful force, especially on the campuses, and I fully expect a much higher turnout of young voters than PPP is predicting, including many who fully do not intend to right now, but will get talked into taking a fifteen minute diversion sometime in the next week.

The other thing to remember is the light residency requirements. Basically any college students, including out-of-state ones can vote if they are living in a dorm. Almost none have land-lines, and I sincerely doubt that those who would be inclined to vote yes will bother voting, while those who support NO or are indifferent will fall victim to the same peer affect.

Furthermore, I do not buy the 47-45 no lead in the 18-29 category. I think we are getting to the point where polls can't properly measure a demographic the majority of which has no land-line nor will answer one if they do. Especially this year when it makes sense to expect if not quite Obama levels of turnout on campuses, at least 2005 levels.

[Holmes]

"It is apparent that our ads about gay sex being taught to kindergardeners is resonating quite well with average Mainers, and the No on 1 campaign's messages of equality for all Maine families is being rejected by the Maine electorate. This is about the radical redefinition of marriage and not equality, screw you Janet Mills, and basically every other public office holder in Maine, nothing is preventing anything from being taught to the kids!"

There, I just predicted their response, so you guys don't have to read it if you find it.

[Holmes]

http://updates.pressherald.mainetoday.com/updates/npr-wants-same-sex-marriage-ad-pulled

Why is SFMM using a company called "hotdaddy" to serve their ads? You know what, I think we should probably not ask.

[Holmes]

There will be a debate tonight between Shenna Bellows of the MCLU vs Marc Mutty of SFMM/Catholic Diocese. It's on TV, and will be from 8-9pm.

These are the rest of the debates, between Mary Bonauto of GLAD and Marc Mutty again:


Thursday, October 22nd, 1:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m.

Live debate on MPBN radio
Moderated by Susan Sharon, Assistant News Director at MPBN
Listen at www.mpbn.org

Monday, October 26th, 7:00 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.

Live debate on "207" on WCSH-TV and WLBZ-TV (NBC affiliate, Channel 6 in Portland, Channel 2 in Bangor)
Moderated by "207" hosts Rob Caldwell and Kathleen Shannon
Watch at www.wcsh6.com or www.wlbz2.com

Wednesday, October 28th, 5:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m.

Live debate on WMTW-TV (ABC affiliate, Channel 8 in Portland)
Cosponsored by Maine Today Publications (Portland Press Herald, Maine Sunday Telegram, Kennebec Journal and Central Maine Morning Sentinel)
Moderated by WMTW-TV news anchor Tory Ryden
Watch at www.wmtw.com

Thursday, October 29th, 7:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m.

Live debate on WGAN-AM radio in Portland
Moderated by WGAN Morning News co-hosts Mike Violette and Ken Altshuler
www.wgan.com

Thursday, October 29th, 5:30 p.m. to 6:00 p.m.

Live debate on WGME-TV (CBS affiliate, Channel 13 in Portland)
Moderated by WGME-TV news anchor Greg Lagerquist
Watch at www.wgme.com

[Holmes]

2 things:

Watch this. It's from the hearing back in April. It just became popular all of a sudden and has gotten 400k+ views in the past two days. This is an interview with him from local Portland news.

Here is the Q1 debate from the other day, it played in the Bangor area. The questions are from actual people on the phone(most are No voters, but there are 2 Yes's ["I have a gay son and aunt, but I don't want gays destroying marriage", "it's their lifestyle that they choose" blah blah]) I think we did well enough, I mean the No debater did have some ACLU-ish arguments(cause she works for them), but the Yes debater kept going in circles around the same argument, "there WILL be consequences, are we willing to risk it!?" and stupid things like that. Their new argument is that if Q1 fails, traditional marriage won't even exist anymore and it'll just be genderless marriage. Cause if Q1 fails, everyone in a marriage right now will become a neutral gender for some reason.

The Yes debater gets really hateful and entertaining near the end, but my favourite quote was when he said "it's not about drinking in two separate water fountains" in response to the equality/discrimination argument.

[Holmes]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfN0opPSw9k

I'm sorry you guys had to see that. God forbid we teach kids about tolerance, but hey, tolerance = gay agenda

[Holmes]

And they still won't file as a PAC and reveal their donors. Instead they're suing Maine to try to hide them.

Yes:

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No:

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No on 1: $4million raised
Yes on 1: $2.5 million raised [probably no more debt due to their nice $1.1million donation]

[Holmes]

Yes on 1 says this on their site:

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I guess they're talking about the HRC? Which definitely isn't going to donate $5 million. Actually, the only group that's donated close to $5 million was... NOM, at $1.6 million, for their side. Then the Catholic Diocese of Maine, at nearly $550k, also on their side.

Thanks for the move, Soulty.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

Have they started claiming that a no vote is for "mandatory" gay marriage like they did in California?

[Holmes]

Hmm, not yet anyway. The question is "Do you want to reject the new law that lets same-sex couples marry and allows individuals and religious groups to refuse to perform these marriages?", and I've seen some people say voting no means "no to rejecting the law, and no to allowing individual and religious groups refuse to perform the marriages." Which is totally untrue.

[Holmes]

There's a new Pan Atlantic SMS poll out. I can't find the pdf yet, but here's an MPBN story:

http://www.mpbn.net/News/MaineNews/tabid/181/ctl/ViewItem/mid/3483/ItemId/9516/Default.aspx

No: 53% (+1)
Yes: 42% (+0)


Yay, every question position I would vote for is winning.

[Eraserhead]

There's a new Pan Atlantic SMS poll out. I can't find the pdf yet, but here's an MPBN story:

http://www.mpbn.net/News/MaineNews/tabid/181/ctl/ViewItem/mid/3483/ItemId/9516/Default.aspx

No: 53% (+1)
Yes: 42% (+0)


Yay, every question position I would vote for is winning.

Hmm, hopefully PPP just blew it with that last poll...

[Miss Maine]

Yes on 1 says this on their site:

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I guess they're talking about the HRC? Which definitely isn't going to donate $5 million. Actually, the only group that's donated close to $5 million was... NOM, at $1.6 million, for their side. Then the Catholic Diocese of Maine, at nearly $550k, also on their side.

Thanks for the move, Soulty.

This, coming from an organization which gets over 40% of its funding from the "National Organization for Marriage", which is currently fighting the  financial disclosure requirements of Maine's election ethics laws.  In fact, they are scheduled for a hearing today, to enjoin the Maine Ethics Commission from taking any enforcement action against them, no matter what their investigations might find. 

Their complaint? Well I'll let their lawyer tell it:

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Oh right. People just can't get involved in referendum campaigns.

Given thast it's so onerous, so burdensome and oppressive to comply with the financial disclosure laws, one wonders how these referenda ever get launched in the first place.

Oh yeah, that's right. You don't need a big nationwide organization - with donors who want to be kept anonymous - to collect signatures and work phone trees. Not  if what you're doing really has significant grassroots support. Maybe that's why the state of Maine has  election  ethics laws in the first place?

[Miss Maine]

There's a new Pan Atlantic SMS poll out. I can't find the pdf yet, but here's an MPBN story:

http://www.mpbn.net/News/MaineNews/tabid/181/ctl/ViewItem/mid/3483/ItemId/9516/Default.aspx

No: 53% (+1)
Yes: 42% (+0)


Yay, every question position I would vote for is winning.

Yeah, I'm afraid Mary Adams will go to her grave the same frustrated, embittered woman she's been for as long as I've known about her.

Pity. She's no dummy. Just imagine what she might accomplish if she put that kind of energy and determination  toward something other than tilting at windmills.

[Holmes]

Yes on 1 wants to produce and air these 2 ads in the final week of the campaign:

http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/anti-gay-forces-maine-file-suit-run-outrageous-ads

All about children... one even implies legal pedophilia if Q1 fails.

Also, I believe TABOR II will also be pretty close.

[Swing Voter]

I am confident that Maine will reject this horrid proposal. They do seem much more permissive than California, whose large minority population has populist tendencies, a rare phenomenon in a state like Maine.

[Miss Maine]

Yeah, Maine defies a lot of easy stereotypes about "red" and "blue" states. How close these ballot measures are depends on voter turnout. Low turnout usually favors reactionaries, especially with a combination of tax issues and social issues on the ballot.  So this being an off-off year election could mean that the angry right come out in disproportional numbers to the more characteristic Maine voters, who turned out to defeat the last question 1  - i.e., the attempt to defeat the civil rights  law for sexual minorities.

We shall see. But if this were happening during a normal election year, I doubt it would even be close.

[Holmes]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DS9zrv_GOrs

Barf.

---

Governor Baldacci and local legislators commence GOTV effort in Bangor

Rep Cheelie Pringree and local legislators start the GOTV effort in Portland

I've actually been following the tweets of some of the volunteers... a lot of them have been targeting universities and getting as much students as they can to vote early. This election might not be as disproportionally old compared to other off-off year elections.

[Holmes]

http://twitpic.com/n9rjm

"Californians! Here they come!"

That's from a press conference by Peter LeBarbera("Americans For The Truth About Homosexuality" or something), Brian Camenker("MassResistance", hate group) and Paul Madore("Maine Grassroots Coalition"). It was this morning... I don't particularly care, I'm probably not even gonna watch it. But I like the fact that the Yes on 1 side flew in the heads of hate groups to Augusta to speak for them in a press conference. A group from the No side was present too, fwiw.

Televised debate tonight at 5pm - 6pm at the University of Southern Maine in Portland. Watch Marc Mutty talk about how same-sex couples need respect and rights(but not marriage), 6 hours after having hate groups bash gay people to Maine's media!

[Holmes]

Live streaming now:

http://www.wmtw.com/video/21454281/index.html

Marc Mutty was replaced by a more classy and uptight man... I wonder why.

[Holmes]

Damn, I wish my boyfriend wasn't in class! I think I'm gonna take a shot every next time the Yes debater says "special interest groups", "radical", "redefinition", "procreation", and things like that.

The No debater is awesome!