As it happens, we had explored the issues surrounding marriage equality in my two non-AP classes on Tuesday, given the VPs statement on Meet the Press, Duncan's statement Monday, and the vote in NC on Tuesday. The notes I had on the board for those two classes were also up during my AP classes, which run consecutively periods 3-4-5-6 (the regular classes are 1 and 8), so while the AP students were doing something else, most had noticed the notes and a few had commented upon them.
Yesterday I asked all my students to imagine that they had been planning to vote this fall (even though only 4 are old enough and also citizens). I asked how many would, before Obama's remarks to ABC, planned to vote for Obama. It was the vast majority of my students. I then asked these students how many would have changed their minds as a result of Obama supporting marriage equality. Out of more than 150 students who would have supported Obama, it was only 2, both female and deeply religious, one black and one white.
There was one student who had not planned to support Obama who now would. There was also one student who had not planned to vote who would now support Romney. These two came from a total of perhaps six students. None of the pro-Romney students, of whom there were only 7, changed their minds.
In other words, out of 165 young people ranging in age from 14 to 18, only three changed their positions as a result of Obama's declaration.
A couple of more remarks below the squiggle.
My students have probably paid more attention to the ongoing political stuff than most adults. After all, I require it. We are studying government and politics.
When all are present I have 128 AP students and 46 non-AP students, so they are skewed towards higher performing students. That distribution is also almost as heavily skewed towards families with two parents having at least attended college. Thus the results are probably not representative even of young people as a whole.
Also, almost all of my non-AP students are black, and about 40% of my AP students are.
In otherwords, this is far from a scientific sample.
Further, our school has openly gay faculty members, openly gay student relationships. I have taught a number of students with same sex parents raising them. Our school system treats gay-taunting as sexual harassment. In other words, we are far from the typical school environment.
But I thought I would offer it as one glimpse of the impact so far of the President declaring his support for marriage equality.