Poll: Gay People Are an Ineffective Bogeyman for GOP

In a new poll, the Human Rights Campaign reinforces the growing conventional wisdom that using LGBT people as a bogeyman is no longer a winning proposition for the Republican Party.

The poll, conducted by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research and released Tuesday, found that President Obama's support for marriage equality seemed to work in his favor instead of Mitt Romney's.

Among all voters, 42% of those who backed Obama said same-sex marriage was an important factor, while only 23% of Romney's supporters said the same. The HRC also claims its poll shows that the "intensity" belongs on the side of equality supporters.

Of those who backed legalizing same-sex marriage, 40% considered it important to them, which is more than the 33% of opponents who said the same thing -- but not by a huge margin.

Still, exit polling conducted nationally found much greater support for marriage equality than in years past. So the trend doesn't seem in opponents' favor.