With Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young introducing a private members Bill into the Senate seeking to grant same-sex couples equal marriage rights, it is well worth looking at the recent Galaxy poll on this very issue to demonstrate just how far behind the Australian population our political representatives are.

The Galaxy poll taken on the 29-31 May 2009 asked the following question:

Do you agree or disagree that same sex couples should be able to marry in Australia?

In 31 of the 32 demographic cohorts measured, a majority of Australians support same sex marriage with only the over 50’s being the odd cohort out, where in that unique case the against held a plurality lead of 49 to 45.

I’ve thrown all of the results into paired charts below  – blue for Total Agree broken down into strongly agree/agree and red for the disagree responses. Just click the charts to expand, and the margins of error for each of the 192 cohort responses are provided in a couple of tables at the bottom. Some of the MoE’s are quite large because the sub-samples were quite small. But the one thing the results clearly show is our political representatives are far, far behind the curve of public opinion when it comes to the legal recognition of same sex marriages in Australia. It does make you wonder.

Results by Australian Total and Gender, plus by Age

genderagenderd . ageaaged

Results by State and by Party Support

stateastated . partyapartyd

Results by Marriage Status and Children plus Employment Status and Employment Class

kidsakidsd . workaworkd

Results by Capital City Status and Education plus Income

educaeducd . incomeaincomed

95% Confidence Margin of Error for Every Result

moe1

moe2