Voters split on Obama's gay marriage announcement

Voters divide straight down the middle on President Obama’s recent statement that he supports allowing gays and lesbians to get married, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.
As with the issue itself, views of the president’s major announcement last week are closely related to one-sidedness, education and age, with Democrats, more highly educated and younger adults generally supportive of Obama’s move. But there's also a twist to the latest results: although African Americans typically oppose gay marriage, most in the new poll are in favor of Obama’s support of it.

Overall, voters split 46 percent in favor of the move, and 46 percent opposed to it. Intensity runs marginally against the president’s statement supporting legal gay marriage. White Protestants are the most stridently opposed. Fully 70 percent of Democrats express favorable opinions of the Democratic president’s move, as do 49 percent of independents (43 percent hold unfavorable ones). Republicans are lined up on the other side, with 76 percent holding unfavorable views, including 65 percent “strongly unfavorable” impressions.

Age is a similarly big divider, with more than six in 10 adults under 30 years old supportive of the president’s announcement, and a similar proportion of seniors opposed to it.
More than half of all African Americans in the poll back the president’s statement: 54 percent have favorable impressions; 37 percent unfavorable ones. The sample size of black respondents is relatively small in this poll (results have a more than 10-point error margin), but the results are an intriguing contrast to where African-American opinion has been on the subject of gay marriage.
In a large-scale Washington Post-Kaiser Family Foundation poll in November, 58 percent of African Americans called same-sex marriage “unacceptable;” far fewer, 35 percent said it was “acceptable” in terms of their own values and morals.

Nearly two-thirds of those who live in states that have legalized gay marriage have positive views of Obama’s statement; in the 31 states where the practice is banned by voter preference, it’s a more even 41 percent in favor, 51 percent opposed.

In the past few days, the topic of same-sex marriage has been driving the conversation: Vice President Joe Biden saying Sunday that he’s “absolutely comfortable” with gay marriage; Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s endorsement of same-sex nuptials on Monday; a new Gallup poll Tuesday showing a majority of Americans support it but 48 percent don’t; and Tuesday’s landslide passage of a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage in North Carolina.

However, the law speaks for itself showing that most states in America have already banned same sex nuptials:

Same-sex marriage is now legal in six states and the District of Columbia. Thirty-one states have passed amendments aimed at banning it. The issue is expected to come up in at least four ballot measures this fall: Maine's ballot question asks whether gay marriage should be legalized. Minnesota is asking whether a ban on gay marriage should be part of the state constitution. Maryland and Washington are expected to have ballot measures seeking to overturn same-sex marriage laws that were recently passed by the legislatures.

Therefore, despite all the statistics and predictions about Obama's stance on this issue, it is still unclear as to how this is going to affect him during elections.