[deadwolfbones]

Public Policy Polling: Barbour, Bryant lead in Mississippi

We asked voters on this poll whether they think interracial marriage should be legal or illegal- 46% of Mississippi Republicans said it should be illegal to just 40% who think it should be legal. For the most part there aren't any huge divides in how voters view the candidates or who they support for the nomination based on their attitudes about interracial marriage but there are a few exceptions.

Palin's net favorability with folks who think interracial marriage should be illegal (+55 at 74/19) is 17 points higher than it is with folks who think interracial marriage should be legal (+38 at 64/26.) Meanwhile Romney's favorability numbers see the opposite trend. He's at +23 (53/30) with voters who think interracial marriage should be legal but 19 points worse at +4 (44/40) with those who think it should be illegal. Tells you something about the kinds of folks who like each of those candidates.

...especially in the deep south!

[GeneV]

Interesting. Ben, have you come across any poll numbers for other iindividual states? Disapproval of interracial marriage is at about 25% nationwide. Most Americans Approve of Interracial Marriages I wonder if Mississippi is the only state with enough concentration of population from that 25% to form a majority within the GOP. Alabama couldn't get its law against interracial marriage repealed until 2000, when 40% still voted against the repeal of this unconstitutional law. I wonder whether a majority of the GOP supported the repeal.

[deadwolfbones]

I haven't, no. It just blows my mind that in 2011 this is an issue contentious enough to poll about.

[GeneV]

I haven't, no. It just blows my mind that in 2011 this is an issue contentious enough to poll about.

If it makes you feel any better, according to the poll I cited, this is more an issue with my generation than yours. For those under 50, approval nationwide is about 90%.

[Ratmagiclady]

Funny thing about tokenism: it's not necessarily about the color of who says it anymore, but what they're allowed to say.


Ask Bobby Jindal or that lady in South Carolina: or indeed any black Republican, you can be of Hindu descent, or any color, or female, as long as you're 'born again' and say the same stuff as the old white dudes, only harder and more crazy-like.

Don't try *actually* saying anything different, though.

[normhead]

approval nationwide is about 90%.

I guess the question is, why do the other 10% think it's even their business? Growing up in Columbus Ohio, my neighbour to the south took the time to stop me, at 8 years old, on the street, and tell me he didn't think my parents should be married. I'd already been to Georgia and had knowledge of the Klan, so I thought he was pretty tame. I wonder what the odds of that happening today are? I hope it's a lot less than 10%.

But on another note, my parents got crossed up one day and my brother 3 years old, got dropped off in winter when no one was home. Those same neighbours took him in and looked after him royally for a couple hours until my parents got home. You don't want to be thinking too many mean thoughts about these people. it's an attitude.. but it doesn't necessarily mean they are terrible people, or not capable of compassion. They had no trespassing signs on the lot line, pointed our way the whole 7 years we lived there, and their little boy wasn't allowed to play with anyone else in the neighbourhood, because they all played with me, and that wasn't right. I often wondered about that little boy, I remember him peeking through a hole in the wooden fence when there was 6 or 7 of us out there frolicking in the yard.

I wonder if he's one of that 10%, or rejected his parents ideology. I'd find out if I could, but, we haven't kept in touch.