http://www.gaylesbiantimes.com/?id=13426GLBT voters deliver for Obama
by Lisa Keen, Keen News Service
Published Thursday, 06-Nov-2008 in issue 1089
Data available thus far on voting in heavily gay precincts suggest the GLBT vote for Obama was at an unprecedented high. In the last several presidential elections, the percentage of GLBT voters supporting the Democrat has hovered around 70 to 75 percent. But Tuesday’s voting was much stronger:
* In heavily gay Provincetown, Mass., 87 percent of voters supported Obama, compared to only 11 percent for McCain, and two percent for others or no votes. Massachusetts overall voted 62 percent for Obama, 36 percent for McCain.
* While 61 percent of Californians supported Obama versus 37 percent for McCain, 85 percent of heavily gay San Francisco supported Obama versus 13 percent for McCain and two percent for others.
* Fifty-five percent of voters in Pennsylvania supported Obama versus 45 percent for McCain, but in heavily gay Wards 2 and 5 of Philadelphia, 83 percent of voters supported Obama.
* In heavily gay Dupont Circle Precinct 15 in Washington, D.C., Obama won 89 percent of the vote.
* In the heavily gay precinct 1233 in Dallas, 63 percent of the vote supported Obama while 57 percent of the city did so and 55 percent of the state supported McCain.
* Chicago’s heavily gay Ward 44 went 86 percent for Obama and 13 percent for McCain.
A Harris poll web-survey conducted October 20-27 with 231 self-identified GLBT “likely voters” predicted 81 percent of GLBT voters favored Obama while 16 percent favored McCain. A similar poll in August had shown 68 percent favored Obama, 10 percent McCain.
Patrick Sammon, president of Log Cabin Republicans, a national GLBT Republican group, said he puts more trust in data from the overall exit poll data nationally, which said once again that four percent of voters were GLBT and that 70 percent voted for Obama, 27 percent for McCain and three percent for others.
“GLBT voters don’t live in just Dupont Circle and Chelsea,” said Sammon in a telephone interview Wednesday morning.
But U.S. Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisc.) said both sets of data may be right.
The results from precincts that are heavily gay, she said, reflect a demographic that has significant access to information about each candidate’s stand on GLBT issues, while the national exit poll is capturing GLBT voters in places that may not have that kind of information at the ready. And in those places, she said, GLBT people are “making their minds up on a larger array of issues.”
Hilary Rosen, a longtime Democratic GLBT activist and political director for the Huffingtonpost.com, wrote Monday she believes McCain lost the election in May 2006 when he “went to kiss the ring of Jerry Falwell.”
“He began to support every anti-gay initiative he could find,” wrote Rosen. “On those and so many other issues, he merged into the George Bush and right wing clone that in these closing days of the campaign have choked him beyond breath.
In a stump speech on countless campaign stops in the final days of his campaign, Obama repeatedly urged Americans to stay true to the name “United States of America.”
“Yes, we can argue and debate our positions passionately,” said Obama, “but all of us must summon the strength and grace to bridge our differences and unite in common effort – black, white, Hispanic, Asian, Native American; Democrat and Republican, young and old, rich and poor, gay and straight, disabled or not.”