Looks like the DC Council will pass marriage equality today. I figured as much. Thus I decided today was the day to release my report and analysis on Marriage Equality: Lessons Learned 2008-2009.
Rather than eat up Markos' bandwidth anybody interested can check out the full report here. Below I will give an executive summary and invite community comments.
A. What Went Wrong in Maine?
1. First off, I think the Maine campaign, given the type of campaign it was decided to wage, and the realities of campaigning in a relatively hostile state (as explained later), did about as well as could be expected. However, I think a different campaign may have achieved a different result. There were five shortcomings I identified:
a. Excessive evasiveness/cuteness as to what the issue was. The word "gay" was used only once in the No on 1 media. "Lesbian" was not used at all.
b. Excessive defensiveness.
c. "Radical gay agenda" charge never answered; made more remarkable by the fact that No on 1's opponents have a clear (and largely unpopular) agenda that for some reason is never discussed in these campaigns.
d. Framing marriage as a "positive right" as opposed to a "negative/inherent right" is not working.
e. Maine is just demographically not a good place to wage a marriage equality campaign. Other states would be preferable. (At least 23 others actually.)
B. Demographic Realities
1. Maine vote, as well as the California Prop 8 and Washington R-71 votes, merged with a 21-variable demographic dataset.
2. Wealth levels and education very strongly positively correlated with equality vote. The more wealth, the more education a town had, the more likely it was to vote for marriage equality. And vice cersa.
3. Other variables not important. Two in particular:
a. Age. No correlation between number of seniors in a town and an anti-equality vote. Wealthy educated seniors tended to vote for equality; downscale less educated seniors against.
b. Race. No correlation there either. Downscale less educated caucasians in Maine and Washington state voted the same way that downscale less educated African Americans (and caucasians too) voted in California.
C. Predictive Model Built
1. 4-variable predictive model built to estimate likelihood of passing marriage equality, based purely on statewide demography.
2. Best states (that don't already have equality) are Hawaii, Colorado, New Jersey, Maryland and Alaska.
3. Connecticut and Massachusetts (which already have equality) were ranked 2nd and 3rd.
4. Washington state ranks 6th. Washington DC ranks 7th.
5. California is 10th, and New York is 15th.
6. Maine comes in at 24th place, suggesting that passing marriage equality there in a popular vote would have been a stretch.
D. Next Steps
1. Can the Defensiveness. We knew they were coming at us on schools and kids. We should have brought it up ourselves and owned it.
2. Go for the second quartile. We have the elites. We need to make this salient to the next tier.
3. Win California.
4. Tactical approaches to other states.
5. Consider pushing for Federal civil union bill, even though a half a loaf, it'll benefit millions (e.g., Florida, Texas, Ohio) in states where it's unlikely equality will be passed any time soon.
6. Wait for better economic times. Social changes are more palatable in a growing economy.