Survey Says is a weekly series rounding up the most important polling trends or data points you need to know about, plus a vibe check on a trend that’s driving politics.
Republicans flip-flop-flip on same-sex marriage
June 26 marked the 10-year anniversary of the Supreme Court ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, which legalized same-sex marriage nationwide. The court was catching up to the American public’s changing attitudes on the issue. But now those attitudes are changing again, at least among Republicans.
In 1996, just 27% of Americans thought same-sex marriages were valid and worthy of the same legal rights as heterosexual marriages, according to Gallup. By May 2015, the month before the Obergefell ruling, that share had slowly and pretty steadily risen to 60%. Now it’s 68%.
Even Republicans came around on the issue. In 1996, just 16% supported same-sex marriage, but in 2021 and 2022, their support hit a high of 55%. Since then, however, it has tumbled. This year, just 41% of Republicans support same-sex marriage.
Because 88% of Democrats support same-sex marriage, there is now a stunning 47-percentage-point gap between the parties—the largest since Gallup has tracked the question. Oddly, though, this homophobic backsliding seems contained to Republicans. Independents support same-sex marriage at nearly the same level as Democrats do—76%—and it’s grown since 2022, when support was at 72%.
This Republican backlash is likely the result of the GOP’s viciously negative attacks on LGBTQ+ people and rights more broadly. Around 2022, when the Republican electorate was most supportive of same-sex marriage, their party’s leaders coalesced around smearing queer people and their Democratic allies as “groomers,” reviving a homophobic lie about queer adults sexually abusing children.
In the fall of 2022, Republicans underperformed in the midterm elections. But rather than learn from their bigoted mistakes, the party has leaned into them, further demonizing one of the LGBTQ+ community’s most marginalized groups: transgender people, and trans youth in particular. Last year, then-candidate Donald Trump and his fellow Republicans viciously attacked trans people, trying to scare voters into backing the GOP.
And it might’ve worked. The electoral success of the anti-trans message is disputable. In the days before the 2024 election, 80% of likely voters wanted both Democratic and Republican candidates to focus less on transgender issues and more on the economy, according to a poll from Data for Progress.
Nevertheless, it seems clear that the Republican Party’s anti-LGBTQ+ messaging is igniting a backlash, though it remains to be seen how far this wildfire of hate will spread. After all, the Supreme Court is now much more conservative than it was in 2015, and its right-wing majority has evinced little respect for precedent or civil rights.
A big miss in the Big Apple
This past Tuesday night, Zohran Mamdani, a state lawmaker and self-described democratic socialist, pulled off what appears to be a shock victory in New York City’s Democratic mayoral primary against disgraced former Gov. Andrew Cuomo. And perhaps none were more shocked than pollsters, which, with one exception, predicted a large Cuomo win.
In polls conducted since the start of April, Cuomo led Mamdani by an average of 14 points in the first round of the city’s ranked-choice voting process. And yet Mamdani ended up winning the first round by 7 points, with 93% of votes counted as of Friday.
Local elections are notoriously hard to poll. Even so, a 21-point miss is a terrible showing.
Many pollsters say the error mainly stemmed from surveys including only those who’d voted in previous primaries, which caused them to miss first-time voters this year. Just one pollster—the left-leaning Public Policy Polling—showed Mamdani leading the first round of voting. Because PPP accurately recognized that Mamdani was energizing young and first-time voters, they gave extra weight to those groups and included people regardless of whether they’d voted previously.
“Tens of thousands of people voted in their first Mayoral election this year,” the firm said in a statement published Tuesday night, after Mamdani’s presumptive victory. “We found those who didn’t vote in 2021 breaking 63-18 for Mamdani. We included them in our poll.”
The primary’s final results are expected on July 1, after ranked-choice tabulations occur. If Mamdani has indeed won, he’d face Mayor Eric Adams in the general election this November. Adams, who ditched the Democratic Party and is running as an independent, has an atrocious approval rating largely due to him buddying up to Trump, which he seemingly did so that the federal government would drop his corruption indictment. That apparent quid pro quo may keep Adams out of prison, but it could also kick him out of Gracie Mansion.
In November, Mamdani would also go up against Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa, who founded the volunteer crime-prevention group Guardian Angels and lost the 2021 mayoral race by nearly 40 points. He may also face … Andrew Cuomo, who refuses to rule out running as an independent, because this asshole is just like that.
Still, Mamdani would be the likely front-runner for the mayorship since the Democratic candidate is usually the heavy favorite. He’s also brought together a fresh, cross-cultural, multiracial, class-spanning coalition due to his relentless campaigning over fixing the city’s cost-of-living crisis.
Plus, dude cuts a stellar ad:
Iran, Iran so far away (from my recently held political beliefs)
America first, no longer. The Republican base appears to be following Trump wherever he stumbles, even if it’s into the middle of a war between Israel and Iran.
Days before Trump’s decision to attack three nuclear sites in Iran last weekend, a YouGov/Economist poll found that only 16% of Americans supported the U.S. getting involved in the war. That included just 23% of Republicans.
But in a YouGov/Economist poll fielded June 20 to 23—i.e., right before, during, and after the strikes—29% of Americans supported the U.S. attacking Iran’s nuclear sites, driven largely by a majority of Republicans (57%) who supported the strikes. Just 9% of Democrats and 21% of independents felt the same way. This icy reaction in the broader electorate may have persuaded the Pentagon to confusingly claim that despite directly attacking a hostile foreign nation amid an ongoing war, it didn’t want to be part of that war.
And now a newer poll, conducted by Quinnipiac University entirely after the U.S. strikes on Iran, finds that 81% of Republican voters support the U.S. joining Israel’s attacks on Iran. Talk about a flip-flop. Meanwhile, Democrats and independents didn’t change their beliefs that much: 75% and 60%, respectively, oppose the attacks.
There’s less need for the GOP to manufacture consent these days. Not only do they not really care what the public wants, they also have a base of voters willing to follow them wherever, ideological consistency be damned.
Any updates?
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Americans hate Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs, but they’re sure to hate them once it comes time for back-to-school shopping. Early shoppers are already getting slapped with higher prices, according to a new poll from Morning Consult. Among the 34% of American parents who have started back-to-school shopping, 62% say clothes are more expensive than last year, while majorities also say the same thing about electronics (61%), home goods (61%), school supplies (57%), and books (54%). While most (59%) hold inflation responsible for the higher prices, more than 1 in 3 blame tariffs directly.
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The paywall: You know it, you hate it, you try to find the information elsewhere because now everything is a subscription. New data from Pew Research Center backs that up: 53% of Americans who hit a paywall will search for the news elsewhere, while another 32% will just give up looking. Only 1% of Americans who bump into a paywall will pay for access. Trouble is, news ain’t free, and advertising dollars are withering. So please, if you can, chip in to Daily Kos and keep the site paywall-free. You can even buy your own subscription, ditch the ads, and help Daily Kos fight Trump’s Justice Department as it comes after us.
Vibe check
The news is a bad place these days, and that’s bad news for Trump when it comes to all his favorite policy topics. The president is underwater on his handling of inflation, trade, the economy, and even immigration, according to election analyst Nate Silver’s polling averages.