From Freedom to Marry's Evan Wolfson, in the NYT:
Last summer, Freedom to Marry hosted a National Press Club briefing to showcase a message to candidates of both parties from lead pollsters for President Obama and George W. Bush. The pollsters agreed: the political equation has shifted dramatically – with accelerating momentum and growing intensity in favor of the freedom to marry.
Smart Republicans know they need to get in step with their own professed values, not to mention America’s majority for marriage.
Since then, the center of gravity has continued to shift toward support. According to the March 2012 NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, voters are more likely to vote for a candidate who supports the freedom to marry than a candidate who opposes, with a full 79 percent saying that they prefer a candidate who supports marriage or that they would not care whether a candidate supported it. Obama 2008 voters are eight times as likely to support a pro-marriage candidate. And Independents are twice as likely to vote for a candidate in favor of the freedom to marry. No wonder that in the 2011 National Journal survey of political insiders, 84 percent of Democratic operatives said the party should champion the freedom to marry, and only 14 percent thought the party should avoid the question – a lesson heeded by rising stars like Governors Andrew Cuomo and Martin O’Malley in New York and Maryland.