Exit Polls:
Majority of GLB Voters in Calif., N.Y. Chose Clinton

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)