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Americans Remain Split On Same-Sex Marriage, Gallup Poll Signals

Gallup.com

With same-sex marriage back in the news because of Vice President Biden's comment that he's "absolutely comfortable" with equal rights for partners in such relationships, the pollsters at Gallup are out with this report:

"Fifty percent of Americans believe same-sex marriages should be recognized by law as valid, with the same rights as traditional marriages — down slightly from 53% last year, but marking only the second time in Gallup's history of tracking this question that at least half of Americans have supported legal same-sex marriage. Forty-eight percent say such marriages should not be legal."

While there's been little change in the past two years, since Gallup began asking the question in the mid-1990s support for same-sex marriage has risen from 27 percent while opposition has fallen from 68 percent.

The May 3-6 national survey of 1,024 adults has a margin of error of +/- three percentage points on each result.

Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Mark Memmott is NPR's supervising senior editor for Standards & Practices. In that role, he's a resource for NPR's journalists – helping them raise the right questions as they do their work and uphold the organization's standards.