According to FiveThirtyEight: Gay Rights are not a High Priority in both Polticial Groups

Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight took a gander at the campaign Web sites of Republican and Democratic candidates. He wanted to see what are the hot topics of the parties:

With the help of FiveThirtyEight’s news assistant, Micah Cohen, I studied the campaign Web sites of Republican and Democratic candidates for the House in the 33 Congressional districts currently labeled toss-ups by The New York Times political desk. Although a few candidates did not highlight particular issues on their official Web pages, and a few others remain engaged in primaries where there is no clear favorite, we were able to examine the sites for 29 Republicans and 29 Democrats who are likely to be on the ballot in November. We then examined the subjects these candidates highlighted on the “issues” sections of their sites, dividing them into roughly 30 categories.

Here's a chart of what's the top priorities of both groups:

As you can see, we are not in the top tier, but to be honest, I kind of knew that. With everything that's happening, I knew we would be somewhere around that range.

Nate said:

And both Republicans and Democrats avoided the issue of gay rights, where public opinion is shifting. Even if gay marriage were too controversial to be a part of the Democratic agenda in most swing districts, the Democrats might theoretically gain ground by highlighting their support for allowing gay men and lesbians to serve openly in the military, where large majorities of the public back their position. But perhaps hamstrung by Mr. Obama, who has taken a series of half-steps on the issue, few of these Democrats have chosen to do so.

What do you think about it?


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