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Volume 9, Issue 2 2011 Article 6
The Forum
Obama to Blame? African American Surge
Voters and the Ban on Same-Sex Marriage in
Florida
Stephanie Slade, American University
Daniel A. Smith, University of Florida
Recommended Citation:
Slade, Stephanie and Smith, Daniel A. (2011) "Obama to Blame? African American Surge
Voters and the Ban on Same-Sex Marriage in Florida," The Forum: Vol. 9: Iss. 2, Article 6.
DOI: 10.2202/1540-8884.1376
Available at: http://www.bepress.com/forum/vol9/iss2/art6
©2011 Berkeley Electronic Press. All rights reserved.
Obama to Blame? African American Surge
Voters and the Ban on Same-Sex Marriage in
Florida
Stephanie Slade and Daniel A. Smith
Abstract
Did African American voters—drawn to the polls by Barack Obama in 2008—cast their
ballots for him and then vote to ban gay marriage in Florida, causing Amendment 2 to pass? Using
original survey and county-level data, we find the linkage fails to hold. While they tend to be less
supportive of marriage equality than whites, black surge voters in Florida were only slightly more
likely to support a ban on gay marriage than other likely voters. In addition, we show that although
counties that experienced large numbers of black surge voters did exhibit more support for
Obama, they were no more supportive of Amendment 2 than other counties. Finally, we
demonstrate that black voters were not responsible for carrying Florida’s gay marriage ban to
passage, as it would have met and surpassed a 60-percent threshold even in their absence.
KEYWORDS: African Americans, race, gay marriage, ballot measure, initiative, presidential
election
Author Notes: Stephanie Slade is a recent graduate of American University, where she became
the first person to earn an M.A. in political communications from the School of Public Affairs.
Daniel A. Smith is University of Florida Research Foundation Professor and former Director of
the Political Campaigning Program. He has published widely on direct democracy in the American
states and is the co-author of State and Local Politics: Institutions and Reform. The authors would
like to thank the many participants at the 2009 APSA and the 2010 WPSA annual meetings who
gave helpful feedback on the paper, as well as those who provided comments when the paper was
presented at Penn State University and the University of Florida. Stephanie would like to thank
her friend and classmate Zach Moller for his moral and technical support.
Might newly registered voters, mobilized to vote because of a candidate
running for office, affect the outcome of a statewide constitutional amendment on
the same ballot? More specifically, did Barack Obama’s successful candidacy for
President in 2008 contribute to the passage of Florida’s Amendment 2, with
newly registered African Americans turning out to vote for Obama and then
casting ballots in favor of the ban on same-sex marriage? If one looks solely at the
exit polls, at reporting by the mainstream media, at punditry in the blogosphere,
and at self-reflection within the gay community, there is ample reason to believe
that such a causal relationship existed in 2008 with respect to the anti-gay-
marriage measure in Florida, as well as Proposition 8 in California and
Proposition 102 in Arizona.1
Less than two months before the November 2008 election, a prominent
news story appeared in the New York Times suggesting that Obama’s “popularity
among black voters” could “hurt gay couples” (McKinley 2008). According to the
account, an unusually high turnout among Obama-inspired minority voters could
contribute to the passage of same-sex marriage bans on the ballots in three states,
Arizona, California, and Florida.2 The theory was that newly registered African
Americans, as well as those with infrequent vote histories, would “surge” to the
polls in support of Obama, but, due to their traditional social values and religious
convictions, would vote for a ban on same-sex marriage, and the theory gained
immediate credence. Although as a U.S. Senator, Obama advocated the repeal of
the Defense of Marriage Act and opposed a constitutional ban on same-sex
marriage, he remained personally opposed to same-sex marriage on religious
grounds.
Obama did refer to California’s statewide ballot measures as
“unnecessary” (Harris 2008), and his acceptance speech at the Democratic
convention in Denver did include a statement of support for the gay community
(Eleveld and Kennedy 2008), but his campaign assiduously tried to avoid the
issue, and the Democratic Party sent only muted cues to oppose the ballot
initiatives. Pre-election polling also lent legitimacy to the theory, with a survey
from the Public Policy Institute of California finding that “a big turnout for the
top-of-the-ticket presidential race could have a significant impact on the rest of
the ballot” (Grew 2008) and an October story in the St. Petersburg Times
1 Blogs with headlines like “Obama Voter Turnout Killed Gay Marriage in California” (2008)
began to surface overnight after the election. The San Jose Mercury News reported just one day
after the election that anti-gay-marriage advocates were aided by high minority turnout for Obama
(Swift and Webby 2008). Numerous anecdotal explanations for supposed black support for the
anti-gay marriage measures surfaced in Florida (see Norman 2008).
2 On November 4, 2008, California’s Proposition 8 passed with 52.26 percent of the vote. In
Florida, Amendment 2 garnered 62.92 percent in a state where a 60-percent super-majority is
necessary. Arizona’s Proposition 102, a ban similar to California’s, passed with 56.20 percent of
the vote.
1Slade and Smith: Obama to Blame?
Published by Berkeley Electronic Press, 2011
reporting that “whether Florida bans gay marriage in its state Constitution could
be decided by how much presidential candidate Barack Obama drives turnout
among African Americans” (Farley 2008).3 Election-day exit polls only seemed to
verify the narrative: Obama’s newly-mobilized minority backers, effectively
given permission slips by Obama and the Democratic Party to vote for the
initiatives, turned out and helped pass the same-sex marriage bans.
Drawing on interviews with proponents and opponents of Amendment 2
as well as a mix of public opinion polls and county-level data, we reassess the
claim that newly registered African American surge voters were responsible for
the narrow passage of Florida’s Amendment 2, which codified in the state
constitution a law already on the books prohibiting same-sex marriage and civil
unions. Specifically, we ask whether black surge voters, who did turn out in
droves for Obama in the Sunshine State, really put Amendment 2 over the top.
We begin by taking a critical look at the qualification of the initiative for the
ballot and the campaign to defeat it. We then situate the surge-voter theory in the
broader direct-democracy literature assessing the relationship between ballot
measures and candidate races, as well as voter turnout and down-ballot roll-off.
Finally, drawing on individual-level survey data and aggregate-level county data
from Florida, we put the theory to rigorous empirical tests.
The Battle to Ban Gay Marriage in Florida
The battle over Amendment 2 began in 2005 when the Florida Coalition to
Protect Marriage announced its intent to qualify a constitutional anti-gay-marriage
measure, the Florida Marriage Protection Amendment, in time for the 2006
election. Its goal was to collect the 611,009 valid signatures needed to allow
voters to decide whether to add a ban on gay marriage to the state constitution.
Leading the charge was John Stemberger, an Orlando attorney and President of
the Florida Family Policy Council (FFPC), who claimed an amendment was
needed to prevent the courts from overturning a 1997 state law prohibiting same-
sex marriage. The petition proceeded slowly, and the campaign relied on two
$150,000 contributions from the Republican Party of Florida to keep its “stalled”
signature drive alive (McMullen 2005). After failing to collect enough signatures
to qualify for the 2006 ballot, state officials announced in November of 2007 that
Stemberger’s organization (renamed Florida4Marriage) had qualified its measure
for the ballot in November of 2008. The group would eventually raise over $1.5
3 The new story in the St. Petersburg Times was based on a survey conducted for the paper that
found 69 percent of black voters supporting Amendment 2, compared to 59 percent of all
registered voters in the state and 48 percent of all Democrats. Because of the small sample size,
the margin of error for blacks was 9.4 percent (Personal correspondence with author of the story,
Robert Farley, October 27, 2008).
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million for its campaign, including more than $700,000 of in-kind contributions
from FFPC (Kaczor 2008).
Parallel campaigns against Amendment 2 soon emerged, one launched by
Nadine Smith, the executive director of Equality Florida, the other led by Derek
Newton, a Democratic political consultant who ran the ad hoc Florida Red and
Blue Coalition. Just as quickly, a rift between the two organizations appeared,
stemming from differing political ideologies and a disagreement over strategy—
namely, whether or not to target minorities.4 Prior to the election, internal polling
for Florida Red and Blue revealed that African Americans overwhelmingly
believed homosexuality to be a lifestyle choice and therefore undeserving of
protection. The belief was “deeply rooted, culturally,” Newton said prior to the
election, and “not addressable by any political campaign.”5 For this reason, his
group shied away from the minority community, targeting instead young,
unmarried, and more educated voters, who tend to be more tolerant of gays and
lesbians (Lewis and Gossett 2008), as well as heterosexual senior citizens.
Because the language of Amendment 2 stated not only that “marriage is the legal
union of one man and one woman” but also that “no other union that is treated as
marriage or the substantial equivalent thereof shall be valid or recognized,”
opponents worried that its passage would lead to the revocation of domestic
partnership rights throughout the state. Cognizant of the successful defeat of a ban
on gay marriage in Arizona in 2006, Florida Red and Blue decided to emphasize
the amendment’s potential implications for all unmarried couples, and in
particular, senior citizens.6
In contrast, Smith contended that Newton’s decision not to target African
Americans was a mistake. According to Damien Filer, a campaign manager in
2007 for Fairness for All Families (the campaigning arm of Equality Florida),
Smith felt strongly that minority voters were “not a lost cause.”7 Smith began
working in 2006 to make inroads in black communities to oppose the anti-gay-
marriage measure, arranging meetings with various progressive and civil rights
4 Smith maintains that the major reason the two campaigns stayed separate was that her
organization was perceived as “too gay and too progressive” (Rodriguez 2008). Members of
Florida Red and Blue, which sought to put “a bipartisan face on the fight against discrimination,”
reportedly found Smith to be too “militant” (Garcia 2008).
5 Author interview with Derek Newton, October 29, 2008.
6 Some opponents of Amendment 2 felt that emulating the 2006 Arizona strategy, in which the
measure’s potential impact on domestic partnerships for senior citizens was put front and center,
could be key to defeating Florida’s anti-gay-marriage initiative in 2008. The Florida Red and Blue
campaign distributed flyers noting opposition to the amendment by the League of Women Voters
and the Florida Alliance for Retired Americans while pointing out that the initiative could prevent
“Helene and Wayne,” an older heterosexual couple enjoying domestic partnership benefits, from
visiting one another in the hospital (“‘No on 2’ group highlights domestic partners” 2008).
7 Author interview with Damien Filer, February 12, 2009.
3Slade and Smith: Obama to Blame?
Published by Berkeley Electronic Press, 2011
organizations, and winning endorsements from a number of prominent local
African Americans. She felt particularly optimistic that minorities could be
persuaded to oppose Amendment 2 as discriminatory if the campaign was tied to
Obama’s civil rights agenda. To capitalize on Obama’s record, Fairness for All
Families distributed thousands of handbills and flyers featuring the portrait of the
presidential hopeful and urging voters to “stand up to discrimination.” In Smith’s
words, people in both white and black precincts “gobbled up” the Obama cards.
“Black voters were written off” by Florida Red and Blue, Smith lamented, and her
own efforts were hindered by a lack of resources. As a grassroots movement,
Fairness for All Families had difficulties raising money to wage an effective
media campaign, in contrast to Florid Red and Blue, which Smith described as
“donor-driven” by a small cadre of wealthy and bipartisan gay rights supporters.8
With the passage in November of 2008 of Amendment 2 and Obama’s
victory in Florida, opponents of the measure were left to wonder whether they had
done enough to combat what they saw as a codification of bigotry and a threat to
families across the state. Newton said his organization’s paid media efforts stood
no chance of competing with the concurrent presidential election for voters’
attention. “We were like whispering into a fire drill,” he said (Reinhard 2008).
Filer, the former campaign liaison for the quarrelling anti-Amendment 2 factions,
offered another explanation: the gay community was demoralized by the
knowledge that same-sex marriage would remain illegal in Florida even if the
amendment was defeated. The “no” campaign lacked a degree of passion and
focus at the grassroots, he said, because “winning isn’t winning.”9 Frustrated by
the defeatist consensus within her own camp, Smith claimed that the opponents of
Amendment 2 failed effectively to target minority communities, as African
American voters “could have been moved more.”10
Theorizing about Surge Voter Impact on Ballot Measures
Support for the conventional wisdom, that socially conservative black surge
voters would make the difference on Amendment 2, was not limited to proponents
of the measure. Derek Newton of Florida Red and Blue Coalition said of the
theory, “Yes. It’s true.” Still, prior to the election, his campaign’s internal polling
provided reason to be optimistic, as undecided voters were seen moving to the
“no” side. Newton also pointed out that blacks, historically, have the highest roll-
off rate, voting for the “top of the ticket” candidate but abstaining in down-ballot
8 Author interview with Nadine Smith, February 4, 2009.
9 Author interview with Damien Filer, February 12, 2009.
10 Author interview with Nadine Smith, February 4, 2009.
4The Forum Vol. 9 [2011], No. 2, Article 6
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races or ballot issues.11 But following the election, Damien Filer, who worked
with both opposition campaigns, disagreed with the validity of the theory that a
surge of minority voters had led to the passage of Amendment. He said that
Florida (unlike Georgia, for example) already tended to experience relatively high
turnout among African Americans prior to 2008, due to a concerted effort in
previous elections to reach out to minorities. This, he said, created a “ceiling” on
the impact that Obama’s candidacy could have on Amendment 2, as there were
“only so many more” blacks in Florida who would not have otherwise turned out
to vote.12
Unfortunately, extant scholarship on direct democracy does little to
comment on the soundness of the theory (for a review of the literature, see Smith
and Tolbert 2007). Although scholars have found that ballot measures increase
turnout (M. Smith 2001; Tolbert and Smith 2005; Lacey 2005), can sometimes
increase turnout among “peripheral” or episodic voters (Donovan, Tolbert, and
Smith 2009), and can even affect candidate elections (Nicholson 2005; Smith,
DeSantis, and Kassel 2006; Campbell and Monson 2008; Donovan, Tolbert, and
Smith 2008), there is also considerable evidence suggesting that the very minority
voters who comprised the Obama-inspired surge were likely to have abstained on
down-ballot measures like Amendment 2. Using American National Election
Study data over several elections to examine patterns of ballot roll-off, that is,
voters who turn out to vote for candidates but leave one or more down-ballot
races blank, Magleby (1984) finds non-whites to be underrepresented as a
proportion of what he refers to as “proposition electorates” by as much as 25
percentage points. In addition, using a post-election survey, Clubb and Traugott
(1972) find that those who voted on ballot propositions in the 1968 presidential
election tended to be white and much more highly educated compared to those
who voted on candidate races, concluding that “statewide referenda constituted an
even less effective means to communicate with, and receive communications
from, the poor and the poorly educated, blacks, and residents of large cities and
rural areas than did other electoral mechanisms.”
High roll-off rates on initiatives among minority voters thus cast
considerable doubt on the surge voter theory. The findings from these studies,
however, should not be overstated. In addition to being dated, they may also
underestimate the importance of “partisan cues,” on which some voters are
particularly reliant in ballot initiative races (Branton 2003; Smith and Tolbert
2001; 2004). With the presidential nominees of both major parties taking public
stances on the proposed gay-marriage bans and the Republican Party of Florida
providing early funding of the pro-Amendment 2 campaign, cues for party-line
voters were not lacking, although it should be noted that the Democratic Party
11 Author interview with Derek Newton, October 29, 2008.
12 Author interview with Damien Filer, February 12, 2009.
5Slade and Smith: Obama to Blame?
Published by Berkeley Electronic Press, 2011
offered its supporters little in the way of direction with respect to statewide gay
marriage amendments. Despite Obama’s opposition to the amendments, for
example, he stated publicly that he was “not in favor of gay marriage” (Harris
2008). Thus, while some party cues existed, party competition on the gay
marriage issue was weak at best.
Furthermore, Amendment 2’s position as the most salient initiative on the
Florida ballot might have mitigated concerns over minority ballot roll-off. Bowler
and Donovan (1998: 54) show how some voters are dissuaded from voting on
down-ballot issues by the exceptionally high cost of making an informed decision
and therefore “seek out the more visible contested measures” on which to cast
their ballots. When information about an issue is easily accessible via well-
financed campaigns, voters are much less likely to abstain or vote no. In Florida,
Amendment 2 enjoyed a distinct advantage in terms of issue salience relative to
the five other constitutional amendments on the ballot. Each of the five measures
received far less earned and paid media attention than did Amendment 2.
Additionally, the number of anti-gay-marriage measures that had appeared on
ballots in 2004 and 2006 (Donovan, Tolbert, and Smith 2008; Campbell and
Monson 2008), combined with the presence of gay-marriage bans on ballots in
California and Arizona in 2008, further increased the salience of the gay-marriage
issue in Florida. Thus, Obama-inspired black surge voters may have been less
inclined to roll off on Amendment 2 than previous research suggests.
Finally, it is possible that election-specific environmental factors may
have increased voter awareness of Amendment 2, on which less than half-a-
million voters rolled off from the total votes cast for president (a rate of 5.86
percent), perhaps decreasing the likelihood of minority roll-off on the measure.
Examining awareness of ballot issues in California, Nicholson (2003) finds that
voters are, on average, better than ten percentage points more likely to be aware
of ballot measures dealing with morality issues and civil liberties. Campaign
spending—especially negative advertising—corresponds to six percentage points
more voter awareness, and media coverage corresponds to an almost seventeen
percentage-point increase in awareness. Because Amendment 2 dealt with
morality and civil liberties issues, enjoyed considerable attention in the media,
and was the subject of two different opposition campaigns that together spent
nearly $4 million to influence voter opinion, lower roll-off might reasonably have
been be expected, even within demographic groups notorious for high abstention
rates. Although non-white voters have been shown to be more likely to roll off on
down-ballot initiatives, a wide array of countervailing factors might well have
buoyed participation on Amendment 2 among the Obama-inspired surge.13
13 According to the Office of the Florida Secretary of State, the total number of votes cast for all
the presidential candidates in Florida in 2008 was 8,390,744, while the total votes cast either for or
against Amendment 2 was 7,898,909. Thus, in reality, nearly half a million voters rolled off on
6The Forum Vol. 9 [2011], No. 2, Article 6
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Scholarship providing insight into the validity of the theory in question is
thus inconclusive. Little evidence exists substantiating the notion that a candidate
could single-handedly alter the electoral outcome of a ballot measure. Studies
pointing to the historically lower turnout rates of non-white voters (Rosenstone
and Hansen 1993) and their likelihood to abstain on down-ballot questions
(Magleby 1984) cast doubt upon the theory. Other research, however, reveals that
Amendment 2 was a candidate for low rates of roll-off, suggesting that the
theory’s expectations are plausible.
African American Surge Voters and Amendment 2: Individual-Level
Analysis
Dozens of post-election news stories drew upon exit polling to frame the
argument that black surge voters were responsible for the passage of the gay
marriage ban in Florida. According to exit poll crosstabs as reported by CNN, 71
percent of African American voters in Florida voted for Amendment 2, compared
to 60 percent of white voters in the state.14 Moreover, the exit poll found that even
young (18- to 29-year-old) blacks voted for Amendment 2, with greater than 70
percent reporting support for the measure. In comparison, just 49 percent of
young whites surveyed in the exit poll reported support for the Florida measure, a
number substantially lower than the overall average. Following the election, news
outlets proclaimed that newly mobilized black voters carried the anti-gay
marriage measure to victory.
Yet, when it came to the passage of California’s Proposition 8 and the
support of minority voters, a post-election study of votes for and against the
initiative, funded by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Policy Institute,
found that support among African Americans had been overstated by the exit
polls (Egan and Sherrill 2009). The authors concluded that party identification,
ideology, religiosity, and age had a bigger impact than other voter characteristics,
including race, on individual propensity to support the measure. In fact, they
found that race affected only 5.5 percent of the statewide vote and “that black
support for Proposition 8 can largely be explained by African Americans’ higher
levels of religiosity.” More importantly, the study presented evidence that black
support for Proposition 8 was significantly lower than the 70 percent exit poll rate
Amendment 2, a rate of 5.86 percent. See, Florida Department of State, Division of Elections,
“Election Results.” Available: https://doe.dos.state.fl.us/elections/resultsarchive/index.asp
14 As of February 27, 2010, nearly one and a half years after the 2008 presidential election, the exit
poll data had yet to be deposited at the Roper Center at the University of Connecticut. For a
breakdown of the exit poll marginals, as well as those of the other two surveys, see Appendix A.
Exit poll marginals are also available from CNN: http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/
2008/results/polls/#FLI01p1.
7Slade and Smith: Obama to Blame?
Published by Berkeley Electronic Press, 2011
as reported by CNN and other agencies. The report pointed to the usefulness of
combining analyses of precinct- or county-wide numbers with individual-level
polling data when attempting to create an unbiased depiction of voter behavior.
Survey Data
To assess the validity of the surge voter theory and the exit polls in Florida, we
draw on two sources of individual data: a 2007 statewide poll of registered voters,
as well as the Florida sub-sample of the 2008 Cooperative Congressional Election
Survey (CCES). We begin by examining data from an August 2007 pre-election
benchmark telephone survey conducted by Lake Research Partners for an
opponent of Amendment 2, Fairness for All Families.15 According to the survey
of 1,000 Floridians, which included an over-sample of 200 registered African
Americans, blacks did appear to be particularly opposed to gay marriage in
Florida. In its memorandum to the campaign, Lake Research Partners reported
that likely African American voters supported the amendment by a 6-point margin
over likely white voters. Drawing on these data, and controlling for other factors,
we explore whether Obama-inspired surge voters were substantially more
supportive of Amendment 2 than other likely voters.
Since the dependent variable (support or oppose banning gay marriage) is
binary, we estimate a logistic regression. A number of individual-level
characteristics are known to have the potential to affect attitudes toward gay rights
(Rimmerman, Wald, and Wilcox 2000; Haider-Markel and Joslyn 2008; Olson,
Cadege, and Harrison 2006). Our logit model includes several control variables:
partisanship (with Republicans and Democrats each separately coded 1 and
independents coded 0); gender (with women coded 1); age (on an ordinal scale of
1 to 12 where 1 = 18 to 24 years of age, 2 = 25 to 29 years of age, etc.); marital
status (with those married coded 1); education (on an ordinal scale of 1 to 6 for
the last year of schooling a person completed, where 1 = first through eleventh
grades, 2 = high school graduate, 3 = post-high school but non-college education,
4 = some college, 5 = college graduate, 6 = post-graduate education); and religion
(with Christians—that is, self-reported Catholics, Protestants, and Mormons—and
weekly churchgoers—“attendance”—each separately coded 1).16 To avoid
15 The RDD phone survey of registered voters was conducted August 14-19, 2007. Base sample of
800 likely voters statewide, with oversamples of 100 African Americans (201 African American
total including those from the main sample) and 100 Latinos (202 Latinos, total), with a margin of
error of +/-3.5 percent.
16 We ran several alternative models, including one also controlling for ballot roll-off (with people
who said they always vote on “all” constitutional amendments coded as 0, and those who said they
do not always vote on all amendments coded as 1). In other models (not shown; made available
upon request) we included a dummy control variable for Hispanic. The substantive results for all
8The Forum Vol. 9 [2011], No. 2, Article 6
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overstating the statistical significance of the coefficient estimates, we adjust the
standard errors by clustering the cases by region (using the state’s 10 media
markets as a proxy).17
Given that the August 2007 survey is of registered voters and does not
differentiate between “surge” and “non-surge” voters per se, we tackle the
question of whether African American surge voters were actually more supportive
of banning gay marriage by distinguishing between those survey respondents who
said they were only “probably” going to vote in the 2008 general election and
those who said they were “almost certain” to vote.18 Although this is admittedly
an inexact proxy for surge voter status, it does capture the difference between
individuals who definitively planned to cast a ballot, regardless of outside factors,
and those whose decision about whether or not to turn out was contingent upon
developments (such as, perhaps, the Democratic Party’s nomination of a black
candidate for president).19
Thus, although the sample of black “probable” voters may include some
non-surge voters, we would not expect the sample of black “almost certain”
voters to include members of the Obama-inspired surge, since these respondents
were already committed to turning out long before Obama won his party’s
nomination. If the surge-voter theory is correct, our expectation is that “probable”
black voters will be more supportive of a gay marriage ban than non-black
respondents. In addition to our key independent variable—black surge voter—we
also include in the model dummy variables for black likely voters (i.e., black non-
surge voters), and non-black surge voters, omitting non-black likely voters as our
reference category.20
these models were nearly identical to the base model, and the additional Hispanic variable never
reached statistical significance.
17 We also ran the 2007 models (not shown; made available upon request) without clustering by
media market, finding no statistical or substantive differences in the results except that the
coefficient for marital status was no longer statistically significant. Without the clustering, the
coefficients for black surge, black likely, and non-black surge voters remain virtually the same,
although the standard errors are lower (p = .803; p = .067; p = .002), respectively. We have chosen
to cluster by media markets, as it controls for various campaign effects—different regions of the
state received different levels of information concerning gay marriage, even prior to the
commencement of the media campaign.
18 The initial screening question (Q1) of the survey asks: “How likely are you to vote in the
November 2008 election for United States President, Congress and other offices—are you almost
certain to vote, will you probably vote, are the chances about 50-50, are you probably not going to
vote, or are you definitely not going to vote?” The survey was terminated for those who did not
respond “almost certain” or “probably.”
19 Using this classification, out of the 1,000 respondents in the 2007 dataset, there are 17 black
surge voters, 184 black likely voters, 43 non-black surge voters, and 756 non-black likely voters.
20 We intentionally avoid using interactions (e.g., black * surge voter) in all our logit models, as
unlike linear models, the magnitude of the interaction effect in nonlinear models is often
9Slade and Smith: Obama to Blame?
Published by Berkeley Electronic Press, 2011
Our primary binary dependent variable is generated from responses to the
question, “Just to be clear, is your vote to ban marriage for gay and lesbian people
in the Florida Constitution or not to ban marriage for gay and lesbian people in
the Florida Constitution?” Respondents who answered they would vote to ban gay
marriage are coded 1; all others are coded 0. Although the survey was conducted
in 2007, more than a year before the election in question, the gay-marriage issue
had already been at the political fore in Florida for two years at the time the poll
was taken and Amendment 2 had successfully qualified for the November 2008
ballot, so it is likely that many voters had formulated an opinion on the subject.
We expected Republicans to be more likely to support banning gay marriage than
Independents or Democrats, and older, married, Christian, and church-going
respondents to be more likely as well to support Amendment 2.
Because there is considerable literature suggesting minorities are more
likely to roll off on ballot propositions than other voters, we include a second
model using the August 2007 benchmark poll to test if black surge voters are
more likely not to vote on Amendment 2 than other respondents. The model uses
identical control variables as our model predicting support for Amendment 2, and
we expect black surge voters to be more likely to abstain from voting on the
same-sex marriage amendment.
We also test the surge voter theory using 2008 CCES pre- and post-
election data of more than 1,800 registered and non-registered Floridians. We
include a near-identical slate of independent variables as in the model described
above (partisanship, marital status, age, education, gender, whether or not the
respondent identifies as Christian, and whether or not the respondent attends
church weekly).21 Because the CCES survey does not ask respondents when they
registered to vote or what might have motivated them to turn out in the
presidential election, we classify surge voters as those who voted in the general
election but who were either not registered to vote or who skipped the Democratic
and Republican primaries in January. Likely voters are classified as those who
voted in both elections.22 Recall that at the time, the primary election on January
29 in Florida was expected not to count towards selecting the Democratic
nominee, as the Democratic National Committee had voted to strip Florida of all
its delegates to the 2008 national convention because the state’s early primary
date violated national party rules.
misleading, with signs flipping direction and the marginal effects extremely difficult to interpret
(Ai and Norton 2003).
21 Besides the dichotomous surge voter variables, only the ordinal category “age” in the 2008
CCES data is coded slightly differently from the 2007 Lake Research Partners data (see Appendix
A).
22 Using this classification, out of the 1,833 respondents in the 2008 Florida sub-sample that
provided answers to these questions, there are 57 black surge voters, 124 black likely voters, 405
non-black surge voters, and 1,247 non-black likely voters.
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Our binary dependent variable is support for a federal ban on gay
marriage, as the CCES does not specifically ask about Florida’s Amendment 2.
While not perfect, support for a federal ban on same-sex marriage serves as a
proxy for support for Florida’s anti-gay marriage amendment, as we feel the
average voter is unlikely to distinguish between statewide and federal legislation
on this issue. Respondents favoring marriage equality are likely to oppose gay
marriage bans at either level, and those opposing same-sex marriage are likely to
support any legislation that would ban it. In keeping with the theory, we expect
black surge voters in Florida to be more supportive of a nationwide marriage ban
than all other likely voters. Evidence of such a relationship would support the
notion that the Obama-inspired surge was largely supportive of Amendment 2,
and therefore that it may well have contributed to the measure’s passage. As with
the models using the 2007 Lake Research Partners data, we include two other
dummy variables in addition to black surge voter: black likely (i.e., non-surge)
voters and non-black surge voters, leaving out non-black likely voters as the
reference category.
To ensure our classification of black surge voters in fact captures
individuals motivated by the Obama candidacy to turn out in the general election
(and providing an internal validity check), we estimate a second model with the
post-election vote for Obama as the binary dependent variable. Our expectation,
in keeping with the first part of the theory, is that black surge voters will be highly
supportive of Obama, relative to non-black likely voters. To the extent that
Obama mobilized more new voters in the general election than did the Republican
Party and John McCain, we also expect non-black surge voters to demonstrate
high levels of support for Obama. The dependent variable comes from the 2008
CCES post-election survey in which respondents were asked, “For which
candidate for President of the United States did you vote?” Those who said they
voted for Obama were coded 1; those who said they voted for anyone else were
coded 0.
Survey Findings
Model 1 of Table 1 reports the individual-level findings from the 2007 Lake
Research Partners logit model predicting support for Amendment 2.23 As
23 To avoid intermediate variable bias—that is, in case other variables besides race and surge
status are driving the results, such as Christians and frequent church-goers—we ran an alternative
stripped-down model (not shown; made available upon request) with the 2007 Lake Research
Partners data that included only the three dichotomous surge voter/race variables. In this model,
only non-black surge voters are statistically more likely to support Amendment 2 than the average
non-black likely voter, with the marginal effect of 11 percentage points higher (p = .039), holding
the other two variables at their mean values. The coefficients for the other two variables—black
surge voters and black likely voters—did not achieve standard levels of statistical significance.
11Slade and Smith: Obama to Blame?
Published by Berkeley Electronic Press, 2011
Table 1.Individual-Level Support for Ban on Gay Marriage and Likely Roll-
off Vote in Florida, 2007 Lake Research Partners Data
Model 1
Likely Support for Amendment 2
Model 2
Likely Rolloff Voter
Coef. P-value
Marginal
Effect Coef. P-value
Marginal
Effect
Republican
1.025
(.211) .000 .248 -.105
(.122) .389 ---
Democrat -.482
(.236) .041 -.119 -.041
(.124) .742 ---
Married .208
(.106) .051 .052 -.186
(.134) .166 ---
Black Surge Voter .137
(.402) .734 --- 1.61
(.718) .024 .379
Black Likely Voter .599
(.339) .077 .147 -.166
(.292) .571 ---
Non-Black Surge
Voter
.628
(.389) .098 .152 1.622
(.372) .000 .378
Age (ordinal) .002
(.018) .920 --- .026
(.032) .407 ---
Education -.165
(.032) .000 -.041 -.167
(.065) .010 -.032
Female -.100
(.226) .659 --- -.041
(.075) .521 ---
Christian .713
(.156) .000 .176 .218
(.110) .046 .041
Church Attendance .337
(.106) .002 .084 -.063
(.130) .628 ---
Constant -.383
(.339) .260 -..644
(.315) .041
Pseudo R2 .105 .053
Log likelihood -590.491 -527.058
N 952 952
Notes: Unstandardized logistic regression coefficients reported, with robust standard errors in
parentheses. Standard errors are adjusted by clustering cases by region (10 media markets). Bold
coefficients indicate observed statistical reliability at 95 percent confidence intervals. Source:
Equality Florida, “A Survey of 800 Likely Voters Statewide with Oversamples of 100 African
American and 100 Latino Likely Voters,” 14-19 Aug. 2007, telephone survey conducted by Lake
Research Partners.
expected, Model 1 reveals a positive relationship between Republican
identification and support for banning gay marriage and a negative relationship
between being a Democrat and support for the constitutional amendment.
Education is statistically significant and negative as expected, indicating that
better-educated respondents are less likely to support a ban, controlling for other
12 The Forum Vol. 9 [2011], No. 2, Article 6
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factors. With respect to religion, Christian respondents, as expected, are more
likely to support a ban, and the church “attendance” covariate (defined as whether
a person attends church at least once per week) is also positive and significant.
However, the model does not show age or gender to be a good predictor of
support for a ban on same-sex marriage.24
Most important to our study, as Model 1 in Table 1 shows, in the pre-
election 2007 survey, “probable” African American voters (our proxy for the
Obama-inspired surge) were no more or less likely than all other likely voters to
support Amendment 2 at statistically significant levels. This null finding casts
doubt upon the conventional wisdom that black surge voters were more
supportive of banning gay marriage than whites. In contrast, holding all other
independent variables constant, black respondents who self-identified as “almost
certainly” going to vote (i.e., African American likely voters) were likely to
support the ban on gay marriage by almost 15 more percentage points than non-
black likely voters, holding all other values at their mean. By way of comparison,
Christian respondents were likely to be 17.6 percentage points more supportive of
banning gay marriage than those who did not identify as Christians, all else equal.
To address the concern about voter roll-off outlined above, we include a
second model in Table 1 that tests whether black surge voters were more likely to
abstain down-ballot on Amendment 2. As Table 1, Model 2 demonstrates, we find
that registered voters who said they were only probably going to vote, regardless
of their race, were nearly 38 percentage points more likely to roll off than non-
black likely voters. This finding is consistent with earlier studies that find down-
ballot abstention rates to be higher among non-white and less educated voters
(Magleby 1984), and provides evidence to suggest that, whatever their feelings
about Amendment 2, members of the Obama-inspired surge were likely to abstain
on that issue at a higher rate than likely voters. Less-educated respondents and
Christians were also more likely to roll off, although the magnitude of this effect
was smaller, at 3 and 4 percentage points, respectively.
24 In an alternative specification of this model (not shown; made available upon request), we
control for whether or not (coded 1 or 0) the respondent reported having a close friend and/or
family member who was gay. Those who responded in the affirmative were indeed more likely to
oppose Amendment 2—by some 19 percentage points, controlling for all other factors. The
inclusion of this variable does not notably alter the statistical or substantive findings of the base
model we present, and we opt not to include this variable in Model 1 of Table 1 in order to
maintain consistency with Model 1 of Table 2 using the 2008 CCES data, as no equivalent
question was asked of CCES respondents.
13Slade and Smith: Obama to Blame?
Published by Berkeley Electronic Press, 2011
Table 2. Individual-Level Support for Federal Ban on Gay Marriage and
Support for Obama, 2008 CCES Data
Model 1
Likely Support for Federal Ban
on Gay Marriage
Model 2
Likely Support for Obama
Coef. P-value
Marginal
Effect Coef. P-value
Marginal
Effect
Republican 1.061
(.164) .000 .258 -1.760
(.221) .000 -.293
Democrat -.668)
(.178) .000 -.158 1.721
(.174) .000 .367
Black Surge Voter .868
(.342) .011 .213 1.570
(.508) .002 .370
Black Likely Voter .826
(.312) .008 .203 1.413
(.391) .000 .332
Non-Black Surge
Voter
-.060
(.165) .714 --- .988
(.190) .000 .220
Married .508
(.143) .000 .122 -.060
(.163) .714 ---
Age (ordinal) .270
(.097) .005 .066 .418
(.108) .000 .085
Education -.266
(.049) .000 -.064 .329
(.055) .000 .067
Female -.279
(.140) .046 -.068 -.207
(.160) .195 ---
Christian .741
(.165) .000 .172 -.486
(.180) .006 -.102
Church Attendance .956
(.156) .000 .233 -.374
(.195) .054 -.073
Constant -1.175
(.299) .000 -2.719
(.351) .000
Pseudo R2 0.183 .285
Log likelihood -1009.775 -850.060
N 1825 1825
Notes: Unstandardized logistic regression coefficients reported, with robust standard errors in
parentheses. Standard errors are adjusted by sample weights on registered and unregistered voters
creating a representative sample of Florida adults. Bold coefficients indicate observed statistical
reliability at 95 percent confidence intervals. Source: Stephen Ansolabehere, Cooperative
Congressional Election Survey, 2008: Common Content. [Computer File] Release 1: February 2,
2009. Cambridge, MA: M.I.T. [producer].
14 The Forum Vol. 9 [2011], No. 2, Article 6
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Table 3. Individual-Level Black Support for Amendment 2 (2007 Lake
Research Partners data) and Black Support for Federal Ban on Gay
Marriage (2008 CCES data)
Model 1
Likely Black Support for
Amendment 2 (2007 Lake
Research Partners Survey)
Model 2
Likely Black Support for Federal
Ban on Marriage
Coef. P-value
Marginal
Effect Coef. P-value
Marginal
Effect
Republican .590
(.583) .312 --- 3.151
(1.162) .295 ---
Democrat .029)
(.307) .926 --- -.469
(.447) .295 ---
Surge Voter -.186
(.186) .319 --- .183
(.435) .674 ---
Married .388
(.194) .046 .096 .670
(.416) .107 ---
Age (ordinal) .060
(.043) .168 --- .294
(.300) .326 ---
Education -.010
(.093) .912 --- -.255
(.146) .080 -.063
Female .019
(.475) .968 --- .072
(.447) .872 ---
Christian .377
(.344) .273 --- .479
(.512) .349 ---
Church
Attendance
.509
(.297) .000 .125 1.040
(.461) .024 .249
Constant -1.076
(.354) .002 -.113
(.937) .904
Pseudo R2 0.038 .170
Log likelihood -127.186 -104.013
N 192 181
Notes: Unstandardized logistic regression coefficients reported, with robust standard errors in
parentheses. For Model 1, standard errors are adjusted by clustering cases by region (10 media
markets). For Model 2, standard errors are adjusted by sample weights on registered and
unregistered voters creating a representative sample of Florida adults. Bold coefficients indicate
observed statistical reliability at 95 percent confidence intervals. Sources: Equality Florida, “A
Survey of 800 Likely Voters Statewide with Oversamples of 100 African American and 100
Latino Likely Voters,” 14-19 Aug. 2007, telephone survey conducted by Lake Research Partners;
Stephen Ansolabehere, Cooperative Congressional Election Survey, 2008: Common Content.
[Computer File] Release 1: February 2, 2009. Cambridge, MA: M.I.T. [producer].
15Slade and Smith: Obama to Blame?
Published by Berkeley Electronic Press, 2011
Table 2 reports the results from our two 2008 CCES logit models.25 As
Model 2 reveals, we find (as expected) that both black surge and other surge
voters were more likely than non-black likely voters to report having cast a ballot
for Obama, holding all other variables constant, while Republicans, Christians,
and those who report attending church at least once a week were less likely to
support the Democratic Party nominee. In contrast to our earlier findings with the
2007 data, however, Model 1 of Table 2 reveals that both black surge and black
likely voters were more supportive of a federal gay-marriage ban. The magnitudes
of these results are of particular note, however. Whereas black surge voters were
about 21 percentage points more likely to support a gay-marriage ban, the
marginal effect for this same group on support for Obama was fully 37 percentage
points greater than non-black likely voters. Likewise, black non-surge voters were
20 percentage points more supportive of the federal ban, compared to 33
percentage points more supportive of Obama, relative to non-black likely voters.
This indicates that while black voters (both surge and likely) reported more
support for a federal ban on gay marriage than did other likely voters, the size of
that result was smaller than the size of black voter support for Obama, controlling
for other socio-demographic and partisan factors. Stated otherwise, a substantial
number of black voters turned out to support Obama (consistent with our
expectations) but did not favor a ban on same-sex marriage (contrary to the
conventional wisdom).26
Finally, in Table 3, we report the findings of the same baseline models, but
limit the samples to African American respondents only. While the number of
respondents in both the 2007 Lake Research Partners and 2008 CCES data is
reduced considerably (to 192 and 181, respectively), it is clear from Models 1 and
2 that in neither case does surge voter status result in significantly more or less
25 As with the 2007 data, we ran a model (not shown; made available upon request) with the 2008
CCES data including only the three dichotomous surge/race variables. In this model, only black
surge voters are statistically more likely than the reference category of non-black likely voters to
support a federal ban on gay marriage, with a marginal effect of 16.2 percentage points higher (p =
.065) than the mean non-black likely voter, holding the other two dichotomous variables at their
mean values. Coefficients for the other two variables—black likely voters and non-black surge
voters—did not achieve standard levels of statistical significance.
26 We also estimated logistic regression models with both the Lake Research Partners and the
CCES datasets that excluded all independent variables other than “black surge,” “black likely,”
and “all other surge” voters. In other words, these models (not shown; made available upon
request) did not control for additional socio-demographic or political factors such as partisan
identification, education, and religiosity. According to the 2007 Lake Research Partners data,
black surge voters were still no more likely than non-black likely voters to support Amendment 2;
non-black surge voters were 11 percentage points more likely. Conversely, according to the
stripped-down 2008 CCES model, black surge voters were 16 percentage points more likely than
non-black likely voters to support a federal gay-marriage ban—5 points lower than when the
control variables were included.
16 The Forum Vol. 9 [2011], No. 2, Article 6
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support among African Americans for a ban on gay marriage (expressed either as
support for Amendment 2 or a federal ban on same-sex marriage). These findings
suggest that African American surge voters were no different from black likely
voters on this issue. Perhaps not surprisingly, only the frequency of church
attendance is significant across both datasets—African American respondents
who attend church at least one time per week were between 12 and 25 percentage
points more likely to support a same-sex marriage ban.
Our models in Tables 1-3 suggest that support by African Americans for
banning gay marriage may have been exaggerated by the press and pundits.
Whereas exit polls found that 71 percent of African American respondents in
Florida said they voted for Amendment 2 (as we report in Appendix A), our
analyses of the 2007 Lake Research Partners and 2008 CCES survey data put that
number at 54.2 and 49.2 percent, respectively (also reported in Appendix A). So,
why the notable discrepancy?
One potential explanation is that survey response bias was stronger in exit
polls than in the two phone surveys. Response bias, or the tendency of
respondents to give socially acceptable answers to survey questions that fail
accurately to reflect their feelings and positions, can make correctly interpreting
polling numbers difficult, especially on issues as sensitive as race and
homosexuality (Berinsky 2004). If differing social norms or some other factor
made non-surge voters inclined to understate their support for Amendment 2 in
exit polls, or surge voters inclined to overstate their support, or both, then exit
polls may not have accurately reflected these groups’ relative positions. It also
could be that black surge and likely voters included in the exit polls actually
rolled off on Amendment 2, but when asked if they voted to ban gay marriage,
they reported in the affirmative anyway. Either phenomenon might cause the gap
between black and white voters to appear larger than it is, lending undue credence
to the belief that high turnout by nonwhite voters aided in the passage of
Amendment 2.
African American Surge Voters and Amendment 2: Aggregate-Level
Analysis
Our individual-level analyses suggest that support by black surge voters for a ban
on gay marriage differs from support by other likely voters less than was
originally reported, if at all. In this section, we delve deeper into the plausibility
of the theory that an African American surge was responsible for the passage of
the measure by examining aggregate-level support for Obama and Amendment 2,
as well as ballot roll-off on Amendment 2.
17Slade and Smith: Obama to Blame?
Published by Berkeley Electronic Press, 2011
County-Level Data
In order to assess the explanatory power of the theory, we compiled a dataset
incorporating a number of aggregate-level political, demographic, and
socioeconomic characteristics for all 67 counties in Florida. When relying on
aggregate-level data, as we do here, it is important that ecological inferences not
be drawn about individual behavior where such inferences cannot be substantiated
by the evidence (King 1997). Nonetheless, the environment in which voting
decisions are made can influence ballot initiative outcomes (Lofton and Haider-
Markel 2007; Nicholson 2003; Smith, DeSantis, and Kassell 2006), and the
factors included in this county-level dataset were chosen for their relevance to the
electoral patterns explored in our individual-level models.
Because we are most interested in pinning down whether Obama-inspired
African American surge voters influenced the outcome on Florida’s Amendment
2, our most important variable is an estimate of newly registered black voters per
county. We calculate the increase in black registrants in a county from December
31, 2007 (the book closing date from the Secretary of State Division of Elections
for Florida’s Presidential Preference Primary) to October 6, 2008 (the book
closing date for the general election), and divide this amount by the total
registrants in that county on December 31, 2007.27 We recognize this as an
imperfect measure of African American surge voters, in that it does not include
black voters who were previously registered but whose turnout was unreliable or
infrequent. Still, we think it is a fairly accurate measure. In accordance with the
National Voter Registration Act of 1993, Florida removes registered voters from
the voting rolls if they have not voted in two consecutive federal elections and
27 Initially, we calculated this variable five different ways: as the increase from July to October
2008 in black registration as a proportion of the county’s total black population; the increase from
December 2007 to October 2008 as a proportion of the county’s total black population; the
increase from July to October 2008 as a proportion of black registrants in July; the increase from
December 2007 to October 2008 as a proportion of black registrants in December 2007; and
finally the increase from December 2007 to October 2008 as a proportion of the county’s total
registration in December 2007. The results were not substantially different from one calculation to
the next. We also calculated black surge voters as the percent increase in black registrants from
2004 to 2008. Using this measure, we found that a one percentage-point increase in new black
registrants actually decreased a county’s support for Amendment 2 by almost two-tenths of a
percentage point at a .95 confidence level, without dramatically altering any of the other
coefficients. We think the fifth measure described above, which we use in the models shown, does
a better theoretical job of capturing the Obama-inspired African American surge voter than does
this final measure, as individuals who registered to vote between 2004 and 2007—when most
observers were skeptical about Obama’s chances of winning the Democratic nomination—were
not by our definition part of an “Obama-inspired” surge. Nonetheless, we think the significant
negative effect of this final calculation of the black surge voter variable on support for
Amendment 2 is worth reporting.
18 The Forum Vol. 9 [2011], No. 2, Article 6
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have failed to respond to a confirmation notice from their county Supervisor of
Elections. Indeed, between November of 2006 and November of 2008, Florida
removed an outstanding 1.312 million inactive voters from its statewide active
voter registration list, many of them minorities, accounting for 10.4 percent of
registered voters (USEAC 2009).
To test our aggregate-level hypotheses, we provide three OLS regression
models. The first two models test whether counties with a large number of newly
registered black voters were especially supportive of Obama and Amendment 2.28
A third model tests whether, in keeping with the direct democracy literature,
counties with a large number of newly registered black voters experienced
especially high roll-off on the anti-gay-marriage amendment.29 A positive
relationship between counties with a greater proportion of newly registered black
voters (that is, a larger minority surge) and higher roll-off in a county would
undermine the theory, which holds not only that minority voters in Florida were
driven to the polls in unusually large numbers by the desire to vote for Obama,
but also that they voted for Amendment 2— in other words, that they did not roll
off.
Each model contains additional independent variables to control for
relevant political, demographic, and socioeconomic characteristics across
Florida’s 67 counties. Serving as a proxy for the partisan leanings of a county, we
calculate the percentage of a county’s registered voters who were, as of October,
2008, registered Republicans. We use 2008 Census Bureau estimates to calculate
the percentage of a county’s population that is black30 and the percentage that is
Hispanic, as well as to control for the percentage of a county’s population with a
bachelor’s degree, a county’s median household income, the percentage of a
county’s population between the ages of 18 and 24, and the percentage of those
older than 65. Finally, the models control for the percent of a county’s population
that is married; a county’s religiosity (percent Christian adherents in a county)
using data from the Glenmary Research Center (Jones, et al. 2002); and a
28 There was considerable range in this variable from county to county. Leon and Orange counties,
for example, each experienced a greater than 5 percent increase in new black registrants as a
proportion of total registrants from December 2007 to October 2008, while Duval, Gulf, and
Calhoun counties experienced overall decreases.
29 We calculate roll-off on Amendment 2 as total votes cast in a county in the presidential election,
minus total votes cast in the county for or against Amendment 2, divided by total votes cast in the
county in the presidential election.
30 We find that our independent variable for newly registered black voters is moderately correlated
with the percent of a county’s population that is black, at .4527. However, a scatter-plot of the two
variables (not shown; made available upon request) clearly indicates that a some heavily black
areas experienced small or negative new black registration (see, for example, Duvall, Calhoun,
and Gulf counties, each which had net losses in black registration).
19Slade and Smith: Obama to Blame?
Published by Berkeley Electronic Press, 2011
county’s rurality (on a 1-9 ordinal scale, from most urban counties to most rural)
using the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s 2003 rural-urban continuum codes.31
Our first model tests whether counties with higher levels of black surge
voters—controlling for various socio-demographic characteristics—were more or
less likely to support Obama in the 2008 presidential election. The dependent
variable is Obama’s share of the county-level presidential vote. All else being
equal, if the conventional wisdom is correct, we should find that counties with
higher levels of newly registered (December 2007-October 2008) African
American voters have higher levels of support for Obama. This hypothesis is
related to the first premise of the theory, which says that Obama mobilized
unusually large numbers of minority voters to the polls. We also expect Obama,
as the first black nominee by either major party for the presidency, to fare well in
counties with sizeable African American populations as well as in counties with
more educated constituencies. On the other hand, we expect there to be a negative
relationship between a county’s vote-share for Obama and Republicanism,
education levels, religiosity, and rurality.
We include the same slate of political, demographic, and socioeconomic
variables in the second model, which predicts support for Amendment 2 across
Florida’s counties. Those counties with higher levels of newly registered black
voters should have higher levels of support for Amendment 2. This is consistent
with the second half of the theory, which states that African American surge
voters cast ballots for Amendment 2 after voting for Obama, and in so doing, had
a significant impact on the outcome of the gay-marriage measure. Simply put, as
the number of newly registered black voters in a county increases, so should
support for Amendment 2. The theory rests on the assumption that minority
voters, as social conservatives, want to uphold the “sanctity of marriage” and
deny extending a right to wed to gays and lesbians (Lewis 2003).
Finally, the surge voter theory implies that newly registered black voters
should not roll off on Amendment 2 at dramatically higher rates than other voters,
ceteris paribus. The same set of independent variables is used as in the other
models. Expectations here are weaker than in the first two models, as little is
known about how demographic characteristics impact voter propensity to abstain
on down-ballot measures. For our purposes, the model need simply explore the
question of whether those counties in which, proportionally, more blacks
registered to vote in the run-up to the 2008 general election witnessed the highest
roll-off rates. This would suggest that many of the Obama-inspired voters did not
31 Our control for rurality utilizes the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s rural-urban continuum
codes, which distinguish metropolitan counties by the population size of their metro area(s) and
non-metropolitan counties by their degree of urbanization and adjacency to a metro area(s).
Available at: http://www.ers.usda.gov/data/population/PopList.asp?TheState=FL%2CFlorida.
20 The Forum Vol. 9 [2011], No. 2, Article 6
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subsequently vote down-ballot on Amendment 2, casting doubt upon the theory in
question.
County-Level Findings
We present the results of all three models in Table 4. Consistent with our first
hypothesis, Model 1 shows that the percentage of newly registered black voters in
a county (our primary independent variable) is a strong predictor of county-level
support for Obama in the 2008 election, holding other factors constant. This
finding, as we discuss in more detail below, demonstrates that the measure, which
was created to capture the “Obama-inspired surge voter” phenomenon at the
county level, did indeed accomplish its goal. The second hypothesis of the theory,
though, is not confirmed. As Model 2 reveals, a county’s proportion of newly
registered black voters has no statistically significant impact on a county’s
support for Amendment 2. As Model 3 reveals, a county’s proportion of newly
registered African American voters is also not a significant predictor of county-
level roll-off, suggesting that although Florida’s Obama-inspired surge voters had
no effect on the county-wide vote on Amendment 2, it does not appear to be due
to these voters abstaining on the ballot measure at an especially high rate.
Again, Model 1 shows a significant and positive relationship between our
measure of newly registered black voters and support for Obama. Counties that
experienced a high proportion of newly registered blacks were far more
supportive of the Democratic Party nominee. This is meaningful in that it lends
construct validity to the variable. Support for Obama increases by 1.8 percentage
points for every one percentage point increase in a county’s percentage of newly
registered blacks. In substantive terms, the effect is sizeable. For example, in
Leon County, which had the highest proportion of newly registered African
Americans as a percentage of all registered voters (6.71 percent), Obama’s vote
share increased by more than 12 percentage points, all else equal. In Orange
County, where 5.05 percent of registered voters in October of 2008 were newly
registered blacks—the second-highest overall—Obama received close to a 10
percentage-point bump in support, controlling for other factors. Thus, Model 1
seems to confirm the theory’s initial premise that minority voters were especially
supportive of Obama’s candidacy.
Model 2, examining county-level support for Amendment 2, reveals a
number of statistically significant relationships in the expected directions. Most
noteworthy, however, is the non- significant relationship between newly
registered black voters and support for Amendment 2, which indicates that
21Slade and Smith: Obama to Blame?
Published by Berkeley Electronic Press, 2011
Table 4. Aggregate-level (County) Support for Obama, Amendment 2, and
Ballot Roll-off
County-Level Variables
Model 1 Model 2 Model 3
Percent Vote for
Obama
P-value
Percent Vote Yes
on Amendment 2
P-value
Percent Rolloff on
Amendment 2
P-value
Percent Newly Registered
African Americans
1.82
(.837) .034 -.885
(.636) .185 .446
(.547)
.419
Percent African American .275
(.119) .025 .283
(.090) .003 .045
(.077)
.561
Percent Hispanic .307
(.066) .000 -.093
(.050) .070 .065
(.043)
.137
Percent Republican -.460
(.119) .000 .230
(.090) .014 -.017
(.078)
.830
Percent College Educated .650
(.176) .001 -.917
(.134) .000 .020
(.115)
.859
Median Household Income
(in $1,000s)
-.108
(.139) .440 -.002
(.106) .981 .018
(.091)
.847
Percent Aged 65 and Older .589
(.170) .001 -.276
(.129) .038 -.069
(.111)
.539
Percent Aged 18-24 -.554
(.409) .181 1.010
(.311) .002 -.374
(.267)
.167
Percent Married .005
(.306) .987 .514
(.233) .032 -.106
(.200)
.597
Percent Christian Adherents -.217
(.089) .018 .187
(.067) .007 .044
(.058)
.449
Rurality (1-9 ordinal scale) -1.943
(.511) .000 1.137
(.388) .005 -.376
(.334)
.265
Constant 49.225
(19.89) .016 31.484
(15.12) .042 11.612
(13.00)
.376
Adjusted R2
N
0.817
67
.829
67 .081
67
Notes: Each model reports unstandardized least-squares regression coefficients; standard errors are
in parentheses. Bold coefficients indicate observed statistical reliability (p-value) at 95 percent
confidence intervals. Sources: U.S. Census Bureau, 2000 and 2006; Florida Secretary of State,
2007-2008; Jones, et al, 2002; Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies, 2002;
U.S. Department of Agriculture, 2000-2008.
22 The Forum Vol. 9 [2011], No. 2, Article 6
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experiencing a high number of new black registrants was not associated with
greater support for Florida’s anti-gay marriage amendment. This finding runs
contrary to conventional wisdom.
Our third model (Table 4, Model 3) attempts to explain county-level roll-
off on Amendment 2. Given the absence of a statistically significant relationship
between newly registered black voters and support for Amendment 2 in a county,
could unusually high roll-off among that subpopulation account for why they
failed to impact a county’s vote? Did these newly registered African Americans
turn out to cast their ballots for Obama and then head home, skipping down-ballot
races? Keeping in mind the ecological fallacy, Model 3 suggests this was likely
not the case, as there is no statistically significant relationship between newly
registered blacks and roll-off on Amendment 2 at the county level. Only two
county-level variables have even marginal success predicting Amendment 2 ballot
roll-off—percent Hispanic and percent aged 18-24—and the coefficients for these
variables fail to meet standard levels of statistical significance.32
Implications and Discussion
Overall, the county-level data suggest that controlling for other factors, the
proportion of newly registered black voters in a county does appear to explain
support for Obama, but not an Obama-inspired minority surge in support for
Amendment 2. Furthermore, with ecological fallacy caveats firmly in hand,
counties with greater proportions of surge African Americans did not experience
significantly higher roll-off on Amendment 2. Our findings using individual-level
data suggest that if black surge voters are more likely than all other voters to
support Amendment 2, the magnitude of the difference is negligible or only slight.
Our analysis, though, also seeks to answer the speculative question of whether the
outcome on Amendment 2 would have been any different, given the statewide
registration of more than 230,000 African Americans in 2008, had these surge
voters, and black voters more generally, not turned out to vote. To answer more
definitively this hypothetical, we calculate the total number of African American
surge voters and black voters overall who supported Amendment 2 (71 percent,
according to the exit polls). We then determine whether these levels of support, if
subtracted from the 62.92 percent Amendment 2 received at the polls, would have
caused the anti-gay marriage initiative to go down in defeat.
32 As a counterfactual, an alternative model (not shown; made available upon request), controlling
for an identical set of independent variables, shows no statistically significant relationship between
counties with large percentages of newly registered black voters or counties with large populations
of African Americans and support for Florida’s Amendment 1, a 2008 constitutional amendment
on the ballot that aimed to remove language from the state constitution allowing the state
legislature to deny property rights to illegal aliens.
23Slade and Smith: Obama to Blame?
Published by Berkeley Electronic Press, 2011
Between December of 2007 and October of 2008, an additional 233,130
black Floridians registered to vote, a group of citizens we have referred to as the
Obama-inspired African American surge. If these voters turned out at the same
rate as the Florida electorate as a whole in the 2008 presidential election (74.6
percent), black surge voters would have constituted 173,915 of 8.39 million total
votes cast for all the presidential candidates. If 71 percent of these surge voters
had then supported Amendment 2, as the exit polls suggest, it would have
amounted to 123,480 additional votes in favor of the measure, conservatively
(and, we might add, unrealistically) assuming there was no roll-off on the ballot
measure by these newly mobilized voters. When this sum is subtracted from the
total 4,890,883 pro-Amendment 2 votes actually recorded, the remaining number
(4,767,403) represents the votes we expect would have been cast in favor of
Amendment 2 if the black surge voters had not turned out.
As for the denominator of our hypothetical, when the 173,915 surge voters
are subtracted from the total votes cast for and against Amendment 2 (7,898,909),
the remainder (7,724,994) represents the total votes we expect would have been
cast on the amendment in the absence of the surge. All else being equal, then, as
Figure 1 reveals, the number of pro-Amendment 2 votes cast in the absence of
black surge voters turning out at a 74.6 percent rate would thus have represented
61.71 percent of the total Amendment 2 votes cast, still easily enough to surpass
the 60 percent threshold needed in Florida to adopt ballot measures.
But what if, energized by the Obama candidacy and having registered
solely in order to aid in his election, all of the 233,130 newly registered black
surge Florida voters turned out to vote and cast ballots on Amendment 2? At a 71
percent rate of support, the number of additional pro-ban votes (165,522) still
would not have been enough to make the difference on the measure. In the
absence of those supporters—in other words, had all the black surge registered
voters stayed home on Election Day, neither supporting nor opposing Amendment
2—the initiative would nonetheless have passed with 61.64 percent of the vote.
What this analysis demonstrates is that blame for the passage of Amendment 2
was too quickly placed on the shoulders of Obama-inspired black surge voters.
Even assuming no ballot roll-off on Amendment 2, the moderate level of support
for banning gay marriage among black surge voters (which both the 2007 and the
2008 survey data suggest is well below the 71 percent rate assumed here) and the
modest size of the total number of black surge voters in Florida combine to
preclude African American surge support from having pushed Amendment 2 over
the top. The constitutional ban on gay marriage was going to pass in Florida with
or without the support of black surge voters.
The fact may remain, however, that African American registered voters as
a whole in Florida lent enough support to Amendment 2 to ensure its passage. Let
us assume that 74.6 percent of the total 1,468,682 African American registered
24 The Forum Vol. 9 [2011], No. 2, Article 6
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voters in Florida turned out to vote, that none of these black voters rolled off on
the measure, and that 71 percent supported it, as indicated by the exit polls. This
would have amounted to 777,902 additional pro-ban votes. If we assume an even
more dubious scenario of 100 percent turnout rate among all registered blacks
with no down-ballot roll-off, and 71 percent support for the initiative, it would
have amounted to some 1,042,764 African American votes for Amendment 2.
Figure 1. Simulated Support for Amendment 2, Assuming Absence of
71% African American Support
Under the first scenario, Amendment 2 would still have prevailed with
60.46 percent support, as Figure 1 reveals, even if every single registered African
American had failed to cast a ballot on the initiative. Under the second scenario,
as implausible as it may be, the absence of all black registered voters would
indeed have prevented Amendment 2’s passage. If no African American
registered voters (at a rate of 71-percent support for the amendment) had turned
out and voted on that issue, the measure would have received only 59.84 percent
of the vote, falling just short of Florida’s 60-percent threshold for ballot measures.
But with such a wildly implausible scenario, it is difficult to make the case that
62.92
61.67 61.64
60.46
59.84
58.0
58.5
59.0
59.5
60.0
60.5
61.0
61.5
62.0
62.5
63.0
63.5
Actual Vote for
Amendment 2
Black Surge Voters,
74.6% Turnout
Black Surge Voters,
100% Turnout
All Registered Blacks,
74.6% Turnout
All Registered Blacks,
100% Turnout
Percent "Yes" Amendment 2
25Slade and Smith: Obama to Blame?
Published by Berkeley Electronic Press, 2011
socially conservative African Americans, drawn to the polls to vote for Obama,
made the difference on Amendment 2. In reality, our calculations illustrate that
African American voters—either surge or all of those who were registered—were
not likely responsible for the measure’s passage.
Conclusion
Our research challenges the assumption that the new black voters who turned out
in 2008 to support Obama were the reason Florida’s Amendment 2 passed. As it
turned out, opponents of the ban in Florida found themselves facing an uphill
battle they would ultimately lose, irrespective of any Obama-inspired minority
surge. As the election result confirmed, a clear majority of Floridians were uneasy
with the concept of gay marriage. Whether the results would have been different
had the opponents of Amendment 2 been able to work together more closely in
forging a campaign strategy remains a different, and unanswered, question.
The widespread theory that Obama surge voters would lead Arizona’s
Proposition 102, California’s Proposition 8, and Florida’s Amendment 2 to
passage in 2008 initially struck some observers as odd, considering Obama that
did not come out in support of the statewide constitutional gay-marriage bans.
Nonetheless, it gained traction among pundits and campaigners, thanks in part to
the profuse media and viral blogosphere attention it received. After the election, a
firestorm erupted when many opponents of the successful bans directly blamed
African Americans for the measures’ passage.
In fact, there is reason to be skeptical about the underlying assumption of
the theory. A surge of newly mobilized minority voters could not have been
responsible for Amendment 2’s passage, unless the people who comprised that
surge voted “yes” in substantially higher numbers than did the people who would
have turned out to vote even if Obama had not been on the ballot. Yet we find
little evidence—either at the individual or aggregate level—that this was the case.
At the aggregate level, our models examine support for Obama, support
for Amendment 2, and roll-off on Amendment 2 by county. Our key independent
variable, which acts as a proxy for the size of the African American surge in a
particular county, is the number of “newly registered black voters” as a proportion
of the county’s total registrants. In keeping with the surge-voter theory, we
expected counties with sizeable proportions of newly registered African
Americans to exhibit greater support for Obama and Amendment 2, but not
drastically higher roll-off on Amendment 2, than other counties. Our findings
suggest that counties with greater percentages of new black registrants were
indeed more supportive of Obama and did not experience higher rates of roll-off.
However, we found no evidence that those counties with the greatest
increases in newly registered black voters in the ten months prior to the election—
26 The Forum Vol. 9 [2011], No. 2, Article 6
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the counties, in other words, that experienced the largest Obama-inspired minority
surges—were more supportive of Amendment 2. A positive relationship would
have provided evidence to support the theory that a surge of Obama-inspired
minority voters aided the passage of the anti-gay-marriage measure. Instead, the
numbers demonstrate that counties that experienced the largest minority surges
were no more likely to vote for Amendment 2 than counties that experienced the
smallest surges.
Although there is evidence that African Americans residing in Florida
were more likely than not to oppose same-sex marriage in 2008, our individual-
level analyses suggest that exit polls may have overstated the extent to which
black and white voters differed on the issue. We find little relationship between
race and support for a gay marriage ban at the individual level of analysis; party
identification, education, and religiosity are much stronger predictors of a
respondent’s attitude. Even among blacks, surge voters were no more inclined
than likely voters to support the ban, although married blacks and those who
regularly attend church were more inclined to favor a federal ban on same-sex
marriage.
The purpose of this study, then, is not to determine the precise cause of the
passage of anti-gay-marriage measures (Lupia et al. 2009), but to test the theory
that black voters mobilized by excitement over the Obama candidacy were to
“blame” for the passage of Florida’s constitutional amendment, as has been so
widely contended. To that end, we have determined that a surge of minorities
turned out to vote in Florida in 2008, that these individuals were overwhelmingly
supportive of Obama, that the roll-off on Amendment 2 experienced by counties
where they voted in the largest numbers was no higher than in other places, and
most importantly, that this surge of Obama supporters almost certainly was not
responsible for the success of Florida’s gay-marriage ban. Any increase in support
for Amendment 2 that came with the Obama-inspired surge simply was not great
enough to have caused the measure’s passage; it would have been just as likely to
succeed in the surge’s absence. We argue, therefore, that to attribute the success
of Florida’s Amendment 2 to a surge of African American voters supporting
Obama and opposing gay marriage would be highly suspect.
27Slade and Smith: Obama to Blame?
Published by Berkeley Electronic Press, 2011
Appendix A. Public Opinion Polls: Percent Support for Amendment 2
Exit Polls
(November
2008)
Lake Research
Partners Survey
(August 2007)
CCES
(November
2008)
Republican 83.0 69.2 69.2
Democrat 47.0 40.7 25.2
Independent 56.0 42.6 39.9
Married --- 53.8 51.2
Not Married --- 47.3 40.0
Black 71.0 54.2 49.2
Hispanic 64.0 50.5 40.7
White 60.0 50.5 44.9
Age (ordinal)
18-24 (exit poll 18-29) 53.0 38.7
25-29 (CCES 18-34) 40.0 34.6
30-34 63.4
35-39 (exit poll 30-44) 65.0 54.7
40-44 (CCES 35-54) 45.4 43.7
45-59 49.5
50-54 (exit poll 45-65) 62.0 52.4
55-59 50.0
60-64 (CCES 55+) 50.0 49.1
65-69 (exit poll 65+) 66.0 47.4
70-74 57.0
75+ 52.1
Education
H.S. dropout 62.3 53.7
H.S. graduate (exit poll no college) 67.0 55.8 49.4
Non-college post H.S. 37.8 44.3
Some college 54.5 58.2
College graduate (exit poll college) 61.0 45.7 37.6
Post-college 39.8 28.7
Female 62.0 50.0 42.9
Male 63.0 51.8 46.2
Christian
(exit poll Protestant and Catholic) 68.5 56.5 51.6
Non-Christian
(exit poll Other and None) 37.5 34.7 25.1
Church Attendance 1x/week
(exit poll born again) 81.0 59.0 65.5
Less 1x/week Church Attendance
(exit poll non born-again) 56.0 44.5 36.1
N 3,212 1,000 1,825
28 The Forum Vol. 9 [2011], No. 2, Article 6
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