[nmh]

"In fact, thirty percent of the gay population voted Republican in the last presidential election. "

Oh David ... ONLY 1-3% of the population is gay so 30% of, let's be generous, 3% will not make or break ANYONES chances to win.

Proof of how small the gap % is, is here:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/910022/posts?page=2

Poor David is so blinded by his hatred of Christians he's can't think straight.

[general_re]

Oh David ... ONLY 1-3% of the population is gay so 30% of, let's be generous, 3% will not make or break ANYONES chances to win.

Really? There are about 214 million voting-age adults in this country - 3% of that is 6,420,000 votes, and 30% of that is slightly more than 1.9 million potiential votes. Even if you assume that they will actually vote at the same rate as the general population - about 50% - that's still more than 850,000 votes nationwide. Considering that the current president lost the popular vote by somewhat more than 500,000 votes, it seems unwise to simply dismiss such a large and potentially sympathetic group of voters...

[shred]

Actually, if you look at the statistics, more than 5% of voters in the last presidential election identified themselves as "gay or lesbian."

So, if you extrapolate from that, you're talking about almost 2% of the total vote was a gay person voting for Bush.

If you took that away, he wouldn't be President.

Their vote is larger than the Jewish vote and about the size of the Hispanic vote.

I realize that many of the more strident ideologues on this issue like to minimize their numbers, but these are the facts and if you want to win elections you look at the facts.

And the facts are that they are a swing vote, an important bloc, and I for one do not want to lose one vote in 2004 in re electing the President.

[shred]

And, btw, here's a link to the 1996 survey, which is far more in depth than a normal poll. It shows that of the total presidential vote, 5% self identified to the pollster as gay or lesbian.

The numbers were roughly equivalent for 2000.

http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1996/elections/natl.exit.poll/index2.html