New Poll of LGB
Voters Finds Clinton Leading Obama, Edwards

A new poll of lesbian, gay, and bisexual voters, conducted by Hunter College, has found that 63% of LGB likely voters in the Democratic primaries say they will support Sen. Hillary Clinton, while 22% are backing Sen. Barack Obama, and 7% will vote for John Edwards.

The poll also found that about 75% of the respondents said they are likely to vote in the primaries, suggesting that LGB voters are much more politically involved than the general population.

"That's an unusually high percentage, it's just huge," Hunter College professor Kenneth Sherrill, one of the study's investigators, told The Advocate. "You rarely find such a high percentage of people saying they're likely to vote in the primaries -- only the most politicized groups in the population will do that."

Sherrill said reading the data really drove home the fact that, in some senses, LGB people are "model citizens."

"They're more active in community organizations, more likely to have communicated with elected officials, and more active in the communities they live in, not just LGBT organizations," Sherrill said.

Other key findings of the poll included:

-90% of LGB likely voters said they would vote in the Democratic primaries and 21% say that lesbian and gay rights will be the most important issue influencing their vote in 2008.

-72% of LGB likely voters consider Senator Clinton a supporter of gay rights, with Senator Obama at 52% and former senator Edwards at 41%. On the Republican side, former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani was at 37%, followed by Sen. John McCain at 13%.

-33% of all respondents say they are "very interested" in politics, compared with 22% of the general population sample. And 36% said they became more interested in politics during their "coming-out" period.

-When asked about the proposed federal law making it illegal to discriminate against lesbians, gays, and bisexuals in employment, a majority of LGB people (by a margin of 60% to 37%) said that those seeking to pass the law were wrong to remove protections for transgender people in order to get the votes necessary for passage in Congress.

-Asked what gay rights goals are "extremely important," respondents said:

Enacting employment nondiscrimination laws: 59%

Protections from bias crimes: 59%

Securing spousal benefits: 58%

AIDS funding: 53%

Legalizing same-sex marriage: 50%

Rights of transgender people: 36%

Ending the military's ban on being openly gay: 36%

The Hunter College poll was conducted with 768 respondents by Knowledge Networks Inc. from November 15 through November 26. The survey was conducted among those who identified themselves as lesbian, gay, or bisexual to Knowledge Networks, which recruits its nationally representative sample of respondents by telephone and administers surveys to them via the Internet. The survey has a margin of error of plus or minus four percentage points. The poll was funded by a grant from the Human Rights Campaign Foundation. (The Advocate)