Mapping Acceptance of Same-Sex Marriage

http://www.theatlanticcities.com/politics/2012/09/mapping-acceptance-same-sex-marriage/3356/




According to the rule books, same-sex marriage is mostly unacceptable in the U.S. But that's not the case when looking at the opinions of the American people. According to a new set of maps from Esri, same-sex marriage is popular in large swaths of the country.

The maps break support for same-sex marriage down by county. Green and yellow dots represent counties where people support same-sex marriage, while orange and red dots represent places where people do not. As you can see, there's no consensus across the country.




There isn't actually much hard data on how different parts of the country feel about same-sex marriage. But, as the site explains, there's a way to develop a proxy for figuring out whether a place would be more supportive or not.

Recently, voters passed California’s Proposition 8 and North Carolina’s Amendment 1, which forbid same-sex marriage. Using the voting results of these two pieces of legislation, Esri analyzed the demographic and consumer data of these voters to identify the geographic views of same-sex marriage. The results were then summarized using Esri’s Tapestry market segmentation system to extrapolate an acceptance index across the country.