How do kiwis feel about same-sex marriage? There's been a notable absence of polling on the issue, but this month ResearchNZ asked about it in their regular monthly poll of social attitudes. The question was
In your view, should same sex couples also be allowed to marry?According to the results [offline, but will be up here later], 60% of respondents were in favour and 34% opposed, with 4% don't knows and 2% saying unprompted that they saw no difference between marriage and a civil union. Support was higher amongst women (66%) than men (51%), and significantly higher amongst young people, with 79% of those in the 18 - 34 age bracket in support (vs "only" 61% of 35 - 54 years olds, and 44% among older people). There were no significant differences by ethnicity, income, or region. The poll had 500 respondents and a margin of error at the median of 4.6%.
I think that's pretty conclusive, though it would be nice to have it confirmed by future polling. Legal bigotry in this country is dead, demographically speaking; it is dying naturally of old age as we speak. Now all we need is an MP willing to put up a bill to put down the walking corpse.
