I heard on the radio today that various groups have already stated
their intent to put an overthrow initiative on the ballot in 2010.
What are its prospects? Where will the votes to pass it come from?
Below I use deliberately conservative estimates and conclude that any
effort in 2010 is going to be really tough, while even a 2012
initiative might hang by a thread.
Part I. Demographics
We know that demographics are on our side. Older voters voted
approximately 2:1 in favor of Proposition 8 while young voters voted
approximately 2:1 against. What are the prospects for overturning
Proposition 8 based on these statistics?
a. What will happen in two years with respect to the youth vote?
There are about 10,000,000 Californians under the age of 18. In the
next two years, approximately 1/9th of them should become eighteen.
Approximately 40% of very young (18-24 yrs) voters actually vote.
That results in 444,000 new votes, which I will conservatively round
down to 400,000. Assuming a 2:1 vote in favor of an amendment to
overturn Proposition 8, that yields a net of about 130,000 votes to
overturn.
b. What will happen in two years with respect to older voters?
The death rate in California is 0.0067% per year (that is, 6.7 people
die per thousand per year). Therefore in two years 1.34% of
California's population, now totaling approximately 37,000,000, will
die. Assuming 1.2% of those people are in fact in the age range of 65
or older, that means 444,000 older people will die (and let's
conservatively round that to 400,000 as well). Assuming they vote at
a much higher rate than young voters, 65% (still a conservative number
from various participation rates I've seen), and that they will vote
2:1 against an amendment to overturn Proposition 8, that yields about
85,000 votes lost to Proposition 8 supporters.
That's a total of a little more than 200,000 votes that Proposition 8
opponents can expect to net in 2010.
We can extend the analysis to 2012, producing around 400,000
additional votes for Proposition 8 opponents.
Unfortunately, right now Proposition 8 is ahead by 507,000 votes.
Therefore we can conclude that demographic shifts alone will not be
enough to produce a victory for equal rights in 2010, and can only
almost, but not quite even the playing field in 2012.
Part II. Just Say No
There are some California voters who either vote no on principle to
all ballot measures, or if they are in any doubt, vote no on
particular ones. I have no way to measure what percentage of voters
fall into these categories.
However, if more than a negligible percentage of voters fall into this
category any amendment to overturn Proposition 8 is in serious
trouble, because instead of being a 'No' vote as it was this year, it
will have to be a 'Yes' vote. Even if only 1/2% of all voters fall
into this category, that's not good news 11.8 million voters voted on
Proposition 8. 1/2% of those is almost 60,000 votes -- but these are
not simply gained or lost votes, these are flipped votes. That
means they count double, so we are (assuming the 1/2% figure) talking
about effectively a loss of 120,000 votes, or enough to pretty much
completely cancel out the effect of getting new young voters.
Part III. Just Words?
Words matter. Exactly what the new initiative says or does not say
could swing some non-trivial percentage of low information voters.
Consider the potential differences among
'No two people shall be discriminated against in their right to
marry because of sex.'
'Every person shall have the right to marry the person of their choice.'
'The right of two people to marry shall not be denied because of
religion, ethnicity, race, or gender.'
Negative vs. positive, shorter vs longer, whether to introduce other
protected classes or not?
Recall that the description of the effect of Proposition 8 was changed
once the California Supreme Court issued its ruling back in May from
clarification of existing law to the REMOVAL of rights. How many
voters did that change of language affect? We'll never know, but I
would guess that again, it was a non-trivial number.
Getting the right wording, both legally and emotionally, could sway
hundreds of thousands of votes.
Part IV. Getting out the vote.
The Mormons and the Catholic Church did it -- from their pulpits, from
their mailings and by being visible for weeks before the election.
The No on 8 campaign didn't. At least not effectively.
How much was it worth? Obviously we can't say for sure, but we can
look at the results of the Obama campaign. Surely their voter
registration and GOTV efforts were worth at least a couple of percent
in such battleground states as Nevada, Indiana, Ohio, Virginia and
North Carolina. Can an effective overthrow campaign do one half as
well? An additional percent would translate into more than 100,000
votes, but that's a lot of phone calls and door-knocking!
Conclusion
Even if everything goes well -- these demographic assumptions are
reasonable, the overthrow campaign can get its voters to the polls,
and the effect of 'Just Say No' is canceled out by an appropriately
worded amendment -- it still doesn't look good for 2010. We'd still
be short by a couple of hundred of thousands of votes. In 2012, it
would be a dead-even match up.
Which leaves persuasion and outreach. Some voters who voted Yes on
Prop 8 will have to be flipped, while losing almost none of our
existing support.
It's a tough row to hoe. Eventually, of course, it will happen. The
demographics say it is inevitable. But how quickly it will happen is
clearly in the hands of the people who will have to be willing to
fight for it, vote by vote, calloused hand by calloused hand.
Note
While voter participation rates will vary in 2010 and 2012 from what
they were in 2008, if we assume that all demographics will be equally
affected (e.g.., less of each age group will show up in equal
percentages in 2010, a non-presidential election, than in 2008) the
absolute numbers of votes would change, but the percentages and
conclusions will remain the same.
References
CA population distribution by age
http://www.statehealthfacts.org/...
California death rate:
http://www.laalmanac.com/...
California elections stats:
http://vote.sos.ca.gov/
Elder voting rates:
http://seniorjournal.com/...