Minnesota Poll: 48 percent back anti-gay marriage amendment

A slight majority of Minnesotans support the effort to amend the Minnesota Constitution to ban same-sex marriage, according to the Star Tribune’s Minnesota Poll.

About 48 percent of Minnesotans support the amendment voters will judge on the November 2012 ballot, 43 percent are opposed to the ban and 8 percent are undecided.

The poll shows that people under 34 overwhelmingly rejected the amendment, 58 to 33 percent, and Minnesotans over 65 overwhelmingly approved of the ban at 70 percent to 26 percent. People who had higher incomes, higher education and lived in the Twin Cities metropolitan area were more likely to reject the amendment.

Predictably, the state split along party lines with Republicans supporting the amendment, 66 to 26 percent, and DFLers rejecting it 60 to 35 percent. Independents were split with 48 percent supporting it and 44 percent rejecting it.

The poll differs sharply with one conducted by the paper in May. That poll found that 55 percent opposed the amendment and 39 percent supported it, but that poll asked people to respond to the statement: ”Please tell me if you would favor or oppose amending the Minnesota constitution to ban same-sex marriage.”

The poll released on Tuesday asked an entirely different question: “Would you favor or oppose amending the Minnesota Constitution to allow marriage only between a man and a woman?”

As other pollsters have found, anti-gay marriage amendments lose support when those polled understand that in addition to defining marriage as between a man and a woman, such amendments bar same-sex couples from marrying.

Public Policy Polling which has been doing monthly polling on a similar amendment in North Carolina noted that there was a vast swing in support for the amendment depending on wording.

“Voters are against ‘prohibiting’ recognition for gay couples. But if you word it in such a way that all you’re doing is defining marriage as between one man and one woman, voters are ok with that,” said PPP’s Tom Jensen. “You’re asking about the same thing in both cases, but the semantics make a huge difference and Republicans clearly know what they’re doing with the language that’s on the ballot.”