Gays as a voting bloc
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  Gays as a voting bloc
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progressive85
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« on: June 30, 2013, 04:55:37 PM »

It is not really something that's talked about as much as the racial groups or the evangelical vote, but gay voters are another group of voters that should be viewed as significant by BOTH political parties.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/16/us/politics/gay-vote-seen-as-crucial-in-obamas-victory.html?_r=0

According to national exit polls, gays made up 5% of voters in 2012.  77% of them voted for Obama, 23% voted for Romney.  So there is still about 1/4 of gays that vote Republican, which I think is shocking since the Republicans are so antigay.

Obama got a 7% increase from GLBT voters in 2012, up from 70% in 2008. 

Gays also increased by 1% as a voting group, but one could argue that there's more gays now than ever before... the baby boomers are living longer and the age of first coming out is now younger than ever but these GLBT kids cannot vote yet.

The straight vote was split 49-49 in 2012, which means that its possible that that 5% of gay voters swung the election to Obama. (http://www.advocate.com/politics/election/2012/11/15/if-obama-and-romney-split-straight-vote-then-lgbt-americans-decided)

Why then is there so little discussed about the importance of gay voters?  What's more astonishing is that the Republican Party is still so antigay when there are 6.5 million GLBT voters out there and the last election was decided by 5 million votes? 

It doesn't make much sense to go out of your way to antagonize a whole key group of voters, not when they number more than the voter margin of victory.
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Supersonic
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« Reply #1 on: June 30, 2013, 05:36:14 PM »

If I remember rightly the Republicans have held between 20-25% of the LGBT vote since 1996. Even Bush won 20% I think..
Although in answer to your question, the Republicans won't outright seek a group of voters when their current base is opposed to things such as same sex marriage etc. Also, from what I've read on LGBT forums when Republicans do endorse things such as gay marriage, many people are dismissive of their attempts, think it's mere pandering and/or say the GOP are the 'party of the rich' or some stuff like that. Plus at it's heart, the LGBT group is a minority, and a collective community, two things which tilt them towards the Democrats. Those who don't identify with this collective community are the Republican LGBT voters, and there is always a good quarter of them. Plus I imagine some of them are wealthy and socially secure, therefore they have 'nothing to gain' so to speak by voting Democratic. I can see the LGBT Republican vote gradually increasing though as time goes on.

That's just my two cents.

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JerryArkansas
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« Reply #2 on: June 30, 2013, 05:39:17 PM »


I, in fact, will leave the GOP party if they start courting gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transsexuals. I imagine many others will follow suit. The trade off isn't worth it for the GOP.
I wouldn't mind I ignorant people leave the party like yourself.
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Non Swing Voter
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« Reply #3 on: June 30, 2013, 06:37:35 PM »

I think the reason they aren't discussed much is because they are mostly concentrated in states that aren't competitive: California, New York, Illinois, DC, etc.

I think the big exception being Florida.  I wouldn't be surprised if increased turnout among gays in the keys and Miami-Dade tipped the election to Obama in Florida after he came out for gay marriage.  Seems like there was higher than normal turnout in a lot of those Miami-Beach area precincts and it wasn't just black voters.
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Non Swing Voter
Junior Chimp
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« Reply #4 on: June 30, 2013, 06:41:03 PM »

Okay, first:

Second,

If the Republicans court homosexuals, as you say they should, they might gain a couple votes, but they will lose a massive amount from it's right-wing base, it's evangelical base, it's bread and butter.

I, in fact, will leave the GOP party if they start courting gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transsexuals. I imagine many others will follow suit. The trade off isn't worth it for the GOP.

Toning down the ridiculous, backwards, homophobic rhetoric isn't just about getting gays to vote for them.  There are a lot of straight people in swing states (like me) who think Republicans are 50 years behind the times on this issue.  So while Republicans will lose people like you, they will probably gain back upper-middle class educated voters who left the party 10 years ago but don't want to pay high taxes.  Winning hate-mongers hasn't really worked out for the GOP the last few Presidential election cycles.
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jaichind
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« Reply #5 on: June 30, 2013, 07:17:59 PM »

Well, Gays and I assume the Gay voter are on whole younger and have lower income than the average voter.  We know that young and lower income (both of course are correlated) tends to vote D.  So it is not even clear that Gays vote as a block or vote their demographic profile.  And there does not seem to enough data be be sure either way.  Speaking of gays and lower income, there is a PEW research report that says that LGBT have lower income than average which is contrary to popular impressions.  My response to that looking over the data is that once one factors in age LGBT income gap with with rest of the population is tiny.  Of course one can argue that LGBT tend to be concentrated in cities where income and cost of living is higher so in terms of living standards LGBT tends to be worse off than average after factoring in for age.  Of course if that is true that is another reason LGBT vote Democratic regardless what the GOP position on LGBT social issues like SSM. 
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DS0816
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« Reply #6 on: June 30, 2013, 10:27:10 PM »


According to national exit polls, gays made up 5% of voters in 2012.  77% of them voted for Obama.  23% voted for Romney.  So there is still about 1/4 of gays [who] vote Republican, which I think is shocking since the Republicans are so anti-gay.…

I take it those LGBT persons voting Republican are tilted more to the males.

It doesn't make sense?! Well, it doesn't make sense that there are women who pro-life, which is really anti-woman. But that does exist.



About those 2012 general-election numbers: It rubbed me that the exit pollings were conducted in just 31 states. It limits the information we had to really look over states' crosstabs. That is applicable to this topic.
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Peter the Lefty
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« Reply #7 on: June 30, 2013, 11:58:43 PM »

Yeah, these statistics are somewhat shocking every time they're published.  The odd thing is, of the gays I know, I would've guessed us to be an overwhelmingly Democratic voting block.  But I can see the rich gay borgerouis voting for socially liberal Republicans.  Still, I don't think we'll be going anywhere as a bloc anytime soon.
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Vern
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« Reply #8 on: July 01, 2013, 03:16:51 PM »

I know this is off topic but I don't understand why Christian want the government controlling marriage laws in the first place. Marriage is a biblical union that God came up with. If our Government wants to truly be separate from the church then they need to leave marriage up to the church and hand out civil unions to whom ever wants it. Sorry I had to get that off my chest. 
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kcguy
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« Reply #9 on: July 01, 2013, 07:45:15 PM »

Black people grow up overwhelmingly in Democratic households and continue the family tradition of voting overwhelmingly Democratic.

Gay people grow up in probably a fairly even mix of Democratic and Republican households.  Politicians teach us to vote overwhelmingly Democratic.

For me, I wasn't the least bit political until my first presidential election in 1992.  Ironically, the two people who defined the parties for me were two losers--milquetoast Paul Tsongas and loud-mouth Pat Buchanan.   I developed a negative opinion of Republicans that year, and the Republicans have done nothing but reinforce that opinion in the two decades since.

I don't think Republicans can win over much of my generation.  The best they can hope for is to stop antagonizing a new generation every election.  My guess is it will take Republicans about 25 years to reach parity among lgbt voters once they stop shooting themselves in the foot, unless of course the Democrats turn stupid, which isn't unprecedented.
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Vern
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« Reply #10 on: July 02, 2013, 10:32:35 AM »

I know this is off topic but I don't understand why Christian want the government controlling marriage laws in the first place. Marriage is a biblical union that God came up with. If our Government wants to truly be separate from the church then they need to leave marriage up to the church and hand out civil unions to whom ever wants it. Sorry I had to get that off my chest. 

So non-Christians and non-believers cannot get married?

Many may not agree with me on this, but according to the bible, marriage was set up by God not man. That would make it a Christian practice. The world just adopted it. Now if a church wants to marry non-Christians then that's totally up to them. But I believe marriage should be left up to the church not the government.
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memphis
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« Reply #11 on: July 02, 2013, 01:49:24 PM »

It's not exclusively a Christian practice, anyhow. There are countless married couples in the Old Testament, as well, long before Christianity. Christians need to wrap their heads around the distinction between a church marriage and a government marriage. They are two completely different things, although each has a purpose. I doubt very much that Christians want to dump government marriage either, lest they lose their legal protections.
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barfbag
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« Reply #12 on: July 03, 2013, 02:05:14 AM »

More gays are coming out, but other than gay marriage the gays I know are at least as conservative as I am. I know a gay person who hates the idea of gay marriage because it would make him feel like a straight person. Basically he wants gays to have a culture of their own and he believes those who want gay marriage simply push for it due to leftist .political reasons which only gives gays a bad name. Part of me wants to legalize gay marriage just to take the issue off of the table. Of course knowing Democrats they'll just push for something more even if gays are perfectly happy. It's quite obvious that most people at gay marriage rallies aren't even gay, but liberals trying to rally more to their cause just like they did in the 60's. Do they actually care about gays though is my question? Or are they being used as political propaganda? I say let's legalize it and take the issue off of the table so that Democrats can't whine about it.
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jaichind
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« Reply #13 on: July 03, 2013, 12:05:20 PM »
« Edited: July 03, 2013, 12:08:58 PM by jaichind »

More gays are coming out, but other than gay marriage the gays I know are at least as conservative as I am. I know a gay person who hates the idea of gay marriage because it would make him feel like a straight person. Basically he wants gays to have a culture of their own and he believes those who want gay marriage simply push for it due to leftist .political reasons which only gives gays a bad name. Part of me wants to legalize gay marriage just to take the issue off of the table. Of course knowing Democrats they'll just push for something more even if gays are perfectly happy. It's quite obvious that most people at gay marriage rallies aren't even gay, but liberals trying to rally more to their cause just like they did in the 60's. Do they actually care about gays though is my question? Or are they being used as political propaganda? I say let's legalize it and take the issue off of the table so that Democrats can't whine about it.

I view this in a very similar vien.  I am for SSM mostly because I do not think government should be involved in defining what marriage should be.  By the same logic I am for legalizing polygamy.  I think many people are for SSM for the same reasons and I support their positions and motivations.  I think others are for SSM as part of an agenda to make the LGBT lifestype mainstream at the cultural level by using the government to almost bless this lifestyle.  I am opposed to this agenda as this is a cultural issue and the government should not be forced to take sides.  For me the best way to beat this back is to announce that government will not be in the business of deciding what is marriage and what is not.  I think social conservatives if they thought about would agree with this approach.  Their main beef with SSM, if one takes a step back, is really with the growth of the LGBT lifestyle and that it is being legitimized.  They were hoping to use the government to stop this but perhaps they can see now that time is not on their side.  The best way to accomplish their goals is to take the governement as weapon out of everyone's hands and make it a non-issue from a policy point of view.  Then the cultural battle over the LGBT lifestyle can take place where it should be, inside peoples homes and social circles where people can choose who they want to associate with.  And if someone despises the LGBT lifestyle he or she should, without government intervention, be free not to associate with someone from that lifestyle. 
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barfbag
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« Reply #14 on: July 03, 2013, 09:35:05 PM »

More gays are coming out, but other than gay marriage the gays I know are at least as conservative as I am. I know a gay person who hates the idea of gay marriage because it would make him feel like a straight person. Basically he wants gays to have a culture of their own and he believes those who want gay marriage simply push for it due to leftist .political reasons which only gives gays a bad name. Part of me wants to legalize gay marriage just to take the issue off of the table. Of course knowing Democrats they'll just push for something more even if gays are perfectly happy. It's quite obvious that most people at gay marriage rallies aren't even gay, but liberals trying to rally more to their cause just like they did in the 60's. Do they actually care about gays though is my question? Or are they being used as political propaganda? I say let's legalize it and take the issue off of the table so that Democrats can't whine about it.

I view this in a very similar vien.  I am for SSM mostly because I do not think government should be involved in defining what marriage should be.  By the same logic I am for legalizing polygamy.  I think many people are for SSM for the same reasons and I support their positions and motivations.  I think others are for SSM as part of an agenda to make the LGBT lifestype mainstream at the cultural level by using the government to almost bless this lifestyle.  I am opposed to this agenda as this is a cultural issue and the government should not be forced to take sides.  For me the best way to beat this back is to announce that government will not be in the business of deciding what is marriage and what is not.  I think social conservatives if they thought about would agree with this approach.  Their main beef with SSM, if one takes a step back, is really with the growth of the LGBT lifestyle and that it is being legitimized.  They were hoping to use the government to stop this but perhaps they can see now that time is not on their side.  The best way to accomplish their goals is to take the governement as weapon out of everyone's hands and make it a non-issue from a policy point of view.  Then the cultural battle over the LGBT lifestyle can take place where it should be, inside peoples homes and social circles where people can choose who they want to associate with.  And if someone despises the LGBT lifestyle he or she should, without government intervention, be free not to associate with someone from that lifestyle. 

Very interesting approach! What gives government the right to decide what marriage is or is not? Leave it up to the states has been my approach. Each state has the right to put it on their ballot. There are a lot of libertarian ways to look at it though. Another question is "what gives gays the right to impose their will on us?" Then on the other hand you could ask "what gives anyone to right to tell someone else what they can and can't do?" On social issues I like to base my stance on whether or not one's liberties interfere with the liberties of another. Again, I don't believe as many people care about legalizing gay marriage as claim to. It feels nice to "take a stand for what seems like a noble cause" without actually thinking about the issue at hand. Then there's straight liberals who only want to exploit gays for their own political gain by supporting gay marriage.
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