So the excitement of last week's announcement has died down a bit, but I've finally gotten together the polling numbers by state, with decent numbers for 43 states, thanks to the relentless work of Public Policy Polling. Of course, everybody still wants to know about the impact on the November election, so the states most likely to be close have been scrutinized in the press. Conclusion: they don't favor gay marriage. Which is true - when the question asked is "Do you think gay marriage should be legal or illegal?"
But the three part question - asking whether somebody favors gay marriage, civil unions, or no legal recognition at all - is more useful here in my opinion. If we assume that those who feel most strongly about the issue are those for whom a candidate's position is most likely to affect their vote, then what we want to know is which group is bigger: those who support gay marriage or those who are against all legal recognition? I call the difference between these two groups the Intensity Difference in the chart below, which includes all the Toss-Up and Lean states as defined by that arbiter of conventional wisdom, the New York Times:
What we see is that the Intensity Difference is very small in some of the biggest Swing State prizes: VA, MI, FL, WI, PA. Meanwhile, it is clearly positive in the purple western states, IA, and NH. If this Intensity Difference actually relates to political behavior, Obama's position is an obvious help for his reelection efforts. I'm guessing Obama's campaign was well aware of this prior to last week.
Below the fold, I will give you numbers for 43 states, and hints for the rest. The states all seem to be following a steady march towards equality, yes, even in the Deep South. Meanwhile, opinions on gay marriage are surprisingly constant within a region. Local culture, broadly defined, seems to have a large effect on views, even larger than respondent's race, which is unusual for political opinion in this country.