Gay Support Turns Off Swing Voters

The backing of gay rights groups could turn swing-state voters against a candidate, new polls show. Politico reports that Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania voters, by a large margin, consider the support of such groups reason to vote against rather than for a candidate; no one since JFK has been elected president without winning two of those states.

Independent voters were particularly likely to interpret the endorsement of a gay-rights group as a negative; men were more likely to hold that view than women, and Republicans more likely than Democrats. Meanwhile, pollees were turned off by business-group endorsements, turned on by labor-group support and split evenly on religious-group backing. (More gay rights stories.)