Nate Silver of fivethirtyeight.com has become the wunderkind of prognostications. He agrees the battle over gay marriage is lost and nationwide recognition is only a matter of time. He has developed a simple formula for computing the year when a state will enact gay marriage. This prognostication will be closely watched! His computations are based on 4 things, 3 of which are different for each state:
1. The year in which the amendment was voted upon;
2. The percentage of adults in 2008 Gallup tracking surveys who said that religion was an important part of their daily lives;
3. The percentage of white evangelicals in the state.
And the 4th, a constant, is that opposition to gay marriage drops by 2 percent a year.
He verifies his math by computing California for 2008 and gets it almost exactly right. And for 2010, Calif. will have gay marriage.
If Iowa put an amendment banning gay marriage before voters today it would pass. But by 2012 it would be a toss-up and by 2013 it would easily fail. Nice that an amendment can't get to voters until then.
His predictions include 11 states with gay marriage by the end of this year, including 3 which have already passed an amendment. Then come 4-6 states a year (including Michigan in 2013) through 2015. The South finally gets it done one or two states a year with Mississippi getting onboard in 2024. That's only 15 years from now. I should still be around.
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