NEWS RELEASE – Public Policy Polling
Raleigh, N.C. – PPP’s new Arizona poll finds not only that voters in the state agree with Jan Brewer’s veto of Senate Bill 1062, but that they also for the first time support legalizing gay marriage in the state.
Only 22% of Arizonans say they support Senate Bill 1062, compared to 66% who opposed it. Opposition to the bill is bipartisan with majorities of Democrats (11/86), independents (18/64), and Republicans (34/51) alike against it. For the first time in our polling we find that a plurality of Arizonans support gay marriage. 49% are in favor of it to 41% who are opposed, a net 9 movement in favor of gay marriage in the state since November of 2011 when there was 44/45 opposition to it. Voters under the age of 45 support it 55/36 with seniors the only age group against it at this point.
“Arizona’s a pretty good representative of how the nation is moving on gay issues,” said Dean Debnam, President of Public Policy Polling. “They don’t support new laws discriminating against gays- they support new laws giving them full equality.”
Moving on to the Governor’s race for this year, it looks pretty wide open for both the Republican primary and the general election. The leader for the GOP nomination is ‘undecided’ at 34%. 5 candidates have measurable amounts of support at this point- Ken Bennett at 20%, Christine Jones at 16%, Scott Smith at 12%, Andrew Thomas at 9%, and Doug Ducey at 6%. Al Melvin, John Molina, and Frank Riggs all register at 1% in the poll.
In hypothetical general election contests between Democratic candidate Fred DuVal (who has just 27% name recognition) and the Republican field, no candidate ever gets more than 40%. DuVal trails Scott Smith (39/33) and Ken Bennett (37/33) but leads the rest of the GOP hopefuls- it’s 36/35 over Doug Ducey, 35/32 over John Molina, 36/32 over Frank Riggs, 37/33 over Christine Jones, 37/32 over Al Melvin, and 40/35 over Andrew Thomas. Overall the race has to be considered a toss up at this point.
PPP surveyed 870 Arizona voters, including 403 Republican primary voters, from February 28th to March 2nd. The margin of error for the overall survey is +/- 3.3% and for the Republican primary component it’s +/-4.9%. 80% of interviews for the poll were conducted over the phone with 20% interviewed over the internet to reach respondents who don’t have landline telephones.
Full results here:
