Among many
interesting developments last night, mainstream
news organizations acknowledged that gay, lesbian,
and bisexual voters exist and asked them to
identify as such in exit polls. A solid majority of
those polled in California and New York preferred that
Sen. Hillary Clinton be their next president.
The exit polling
found that among the 4% of California voters who identified
as GLB, 63% voted for Clinton, 29% for Obama, and 1% for
Edwards. In New York, 7% of voters
self-identified as GLB: 59% voted for Clinton, 36% for
Obama, and 3% for Edwards.
New York and
California were the only states in which this question was
asked. Tobias Wolff, chairman of Obama's LGBT policy
committee, said the polls don't necessarily
reflect the views of the entire community since
they were both taken in states that Clinton carried (she
won California by 52% to 42% of the popular vote, and
New York 57% to 40%). "The question is, How did LGBT
people vote in comparison to the general population?
In New York, for example, it looks like LGBT people
and the general population voted in about the same way,"
said Wolff. But the results generally mirror the
findings of Hunter College's national polling of the community last
fall, when 63% of likely GLB voters preferred Clinton,
22% Obama, and 7% Edwards.
These exit polls
were conducted by Edison Media Research of Somerville,
N.J., and Mitofsky International of New York City for the
National Election Pool, which consists of ABC News,
the Associated Press, CBS News, CNN, Fox News, and NBC
News.
Kenneth Sherrill,
political science professor at Hunter College, said the
polling was not an absolute first. "The national exit
polling, going back into the 1990s in the presidential
election, has asked about sexual orientation," said
Sherrill, adding that the question has also been asked
in some New York and California primaries. But he noted that
asking about sexual orientation is not the norm across the
country, often because you have to have enough
respondents to reach the threshold of statistical
significance.
Joe Tarver,
communications director for New York
City-based Empire State Pride Agenda, said
he is often asked to cite specific numbers for
the LGBT community and that those statistics are hard to
come by. "I was glad to see the networks and news
services that do exit polling decided to ask New
Yorkers and Californians who voted yesterday about
sexual orientation," Tarver said. "Exit polls are one of
only two instances where any objective data on our community
is gathered that shows how many of us there really are
in this country. The other is the U.S. Census, and
there are real limitations to what that data shows."
Tarver added that
having hard data is particularly beneficial when
lobbying elected officials on issues important to the
community. (Kerry Eleveld, The Advocate)
