Support for same-sex marriage seems to have been increasing at an accelerated pace over the past few years, Nate Silver says at the NY Time’s FiveThirtyEight.com, with opponents now in the minority.
Tracking dozens of polls going back to 1988–when less than 15 percent said they supported gay marriage–Silver estimates that 50 percent of Americans now support the union of same-sex couples, while 46 percent are opposed. Perhaps more significantly, attitudes are shifting at a rate of about 4 percentage points a year, far more quickly than in the past.
If that trend continues–and there’s no assurance it will–supporters would outnumber opponents roughly 56-40 in the general population by November 2012, Silver says.