Marriage Alliance was trumpeting the results of a survey it released to far-right-wing columnist Miranda Devine earlier this week, which Devine breathlessly reported showed “just 33%” of people strongly favour same-sex marriage, with 19% somewhat supporting it (meaning a majority at 52% support it overall, according to the anti-gay lobby’s own survey).
The exact questions used to derive these answers and the subsequent ones about “concerns” about marriage equality leading to Safe Schools and gay adoption (using the slippery slope fallacy they like to use) were not included in Devine’s article, and rather than doing the usual thing of posting the full survey to their website, Marriage Alliance simply linked to Devine’s article. Devine appears to be close friends with Marriage Alliance’s Sophie York, so it isn’t so surprising the group would drop this “exclusive” to her, but attempts by other journalists to get a hold of the report have come to nothing.
BuzzFeed‘s Lane Sainty and Crikey‘s Josh Taylor have both contacted Marriage Alliance to ask for the report but got no response. Taylor, however, did start receiving Marriage Alliance newsletters. Could it be that the company engaged in push polling? It’s hard to say without seeing the actual survey. Sexton Market Research — which did the polling for MA — has previously done similar anti-marriage equality polling for the Sydney Archdiocese.
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