WASHINGTON (AP) -
President Barack Obama's re-election campaign
is beginning to express some confidence that the president's historic,
yet politically risky, embrace of gay marriage may not hurt him in the
November election.
In a conference call
announcing efforts to get gay and lesbian voters engaged in the Obama
campaign, officials said poll numbers on same-sex marriage were
increasingly tilting in their favor.
"A lot of recent polls show
that support for gay marriage across the country is growing," said Clo
Ewing, an Obama campaign spokeswoman.
That includes a Washington
Post-ABC News poll out Wednesday showing 53 percent of Americans say gay
marriage should be a legal, a new high for the poll. Thirty-nine
percent, a new low, say gay marriage should be illegal.
A separate poll showed that
just 7 percent of registered voters said Obama's public support for gay
marriage raised concerns about supporting him. For 31 percent of
voters, the president's announcement reinforced their support of him and
for 62 percent of voters, it did not make a difference, according to
the NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll.
Immediately following
Obama's announcement of support for gay marriage, White House and
campaign aides readily acknowledged that the political fallout was
unclear. Obama himself said it was "very hard to say" whether the issue
would hurt him in his fall campaign against presumptive Republican
nominee Mitt Romney.
Despite the new national
polling, Obama's embrace of gay marriage comes with political risks.
Thirty states have voted against gay marriage, including North Carolina,
a key battleground state where voters approved a ban on same-sex unions
the day before Obama announced his public support in a television
interview.
The president's
announcement earlier this month ended his lengthy self-described
"evolution" on the hot-button social issue. While the White House
insisted Obama always planned to make his views on gay marriage known
this summer, some aides worried that doing so could hurt him politically
with socially conservative voters in swing states, like Virginia and
North Carolina.
Other Obama aides see the
president's support for same-sex marriage as an opportunity to boost
enthusiasm and fundraising among gay supporters and young people. With
that in mind, the Obama campaign has sought to turn the president's
embrace of gay marriage into an area of contrast with Romney,
highlighting the former Massachusetts governor's support for a
constitutional amendment banning same-sex unions.
"Romney's position on
same-sex marriage is also historic but not in the way it should be,"
said Joe Solmonese, a co-chair of Obama's campaign. "He has pledged to
write discrimination into the constitution."
The Obama campaign also
announced a new effort Wednesday to boost voter registration and turnout
in the gay and lesbian community through phone banks, house parties and
other grassroots outreach efforts.
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