Cronkite/Eight Poll: Arizonans favoring marriage-definition proposition

NOTE: SUBS 6th graf to CORRECT that Molique is a spokeswoman for the campaign supporting Proposition 102, not for the Center for Arizona Policy.  A corrective to this story moved Wednesday, Oct. 1, and this version has been corrected to conform.

With BC-CNS-Cronkite/Eight Poll-Box

By ANDREW J. SHAINKER
Cronkite News Service

PHOENIX (Tuesday, Sept. 30) _ Two years after rejecting a similar measure, Arizona voters appear to favor a ballot proposition that would define marriage as a union of one man and one woman, according to a Cronkite/Eight Poll released Tuesday.

Forty-nine percent of respondents said they planned to vote for Proposition 102, while 40 percent were against it. Nine percent were undecided.In 2006, voters defeated Proposition 107, which would have carried the same definition of marriage and also barred unmarried partners from receiving benefits.

Bruce Merrill, a retired Arizona State University professor who directs the poll, said not having the prohibition on benefits this time around could be helping the new proposition.

“I believe personally Proposition 107 would have passed if it wasn’t a compound law,” Merrill said.

Kelly Molique, spokeswoman the campaign supporting Proposition 102, said the results reinforce her confidence that the measure will pass.

“The fact is Arizona voters want a clear definition of marriage, and now most likely they will get it,” Molique said.

State Rep. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Phoenix, chairwoman of the campaign to defeat Proposition 102, noted that 49 percent doesn’t represent a majority of Arizona voters. She said Molique shouldn’t be so confident.

“If she believes she has the majority, she’s nuts,” Sinema said.“I think the numbers were exactly what we expected,” she said. “The results show that a majority of Arizona voters do not want to change the Constitution.”

The poll, conducted Thursday to Sunday by ASU’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication and Eight-KAET-TV, involved 976 registered Arizona voters. It has a sampling error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.

The Cronkite School operates Cronkite News Service.

The poll also found that:

_ Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain of Arizona continued to lead Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, the Democratic nominee. Forty-five percent favored McCain, while 38 percent said they intended to vote for Obama. In an August Cronkite/Eight Poll, McCain had a 10-point lead.

_ Forty-eight percent said they were very confident or generally confident that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the GOP vice presidential nominee, could be an effective president if she had to take over, while 46 percent said they weren’t very confident. As for Delaware Sen. Joe Biden, the Democratic vice presidential nominee, 70 percent said they were very confident or generally confident that he could take over effectively as president, while 24 percent weren’t very confident.

_ Thirty-nine percent opposed the Bush administration’s $700 billion plan to address the crisis gripping the U.S. financial markets, while 31 percent supported it and 30 percent had no opinion.