Almost Half of New York State Voters Are Pissed the Senate Didn’t OK Gay Marriage
DATA PIPE — “Forty-seven percent of voters were disappointed that the Senate rejected the bill to legalize same sex marriages in New York, compared to 41 percent who were pleased by the Senate’s vote. Liberals, young voters, Democrats and Jewish voters were most disappointed. Conservatives, Republicans, older, and African American voters were most pleased with the Senate vote. In August, 50 percent of voters told Siena that they supported the Senate passing the same sex marriage bill, with 44 percent then opposing Senate passage. ‘New Yorkers remain fairly evenly divided on the issue of same sex marriages, with a small advantage for those supporting it despite the Senate’s defeat of the legislation,” [Siena pollster Steven Greenberg] said. ‘Overall, 40 percent of voters – 42 percent of those who were disappointed in the Senate action and 47 percent of those who were pleased – said that their Senator’s vote on the issue would be a deciding factor in their vote for State Senator next years.’” —Data from a Siena Research Institute poll (PDF), “conducted December 6-9, 2009 by telephone calls to 665 New York State registered voters. It has a margin of error of + 3.8 percentage points.”
How many of them contacted their senator before the vote to inform them of their opinion?
It doesn’t matter FakeName. The “polls” for their District matter, not the number of calls they receive or “Statewide” numbers.
Tim Gil and others gave money to Senator Abbdabbadoo (aka Fred Flinstone) and he voted based on the polling of his constituents – not phone calls.
Calling a politician doesn’t do any good – unless you have polling data they can cover their asses with.
Brian,
But you have to decide who you hire to do the polling. If you hire Pew Research, you get a poll of people “randomly” selected from lists owned by Pew Research. If the particular polling company got its lists from churches, or from a particular party, then their “random” poll can be heavily slanted. (Why do you think they call it “Pew” research?)
And, of course, the way the questions are phrased and sequenced has a lot of influence, also, on the results.
So a Republican can hire a certain polling company, and know with pretty good confidence that the results will agree with what he expects. And, a Democrat can hire a different polling company, and get results that mostly agree with his/her expectations. No surprises. Politicians of both parties don’t like surprises. They routinely hire polling companies that have in the past told them what they wanted to hear.
That is one of the factors that leads to our bifurcated system. The two parties are each believing that it is right and the other is wrong, and each having its point of view confirmed by polls. It makes rational negotiation and compromise very difficult, perhaps impossible.