Gay Rights in the States: Public Opinion and Policy Responsiveness

TLDR

The study examines how policy‑specific public opinion influences state adoption of gay‑rights policies and what conditions shape this relationship. The authors estimate state‑level support for eight gay‑rights policies from national surveys and distinguish between policy responsiveness to opinion and congruence with opinion majorities. The analysis finds that state policies are highly responsive to policy‑specific public opinion, especially when the issue is salient, yet many policies exhibit noncongruence—supermajority support often fails to translate into adoption, and when adopted they tend to be more conservative than voters prefer, with no evidence that state institutions influence responsiveness or congruence.

Abstract

We study the effects of policy-specific public opinion on state adoption of policies affecting gays and lesbians, and the factors that condition this relationship. Using national surveys and advances in opinion estimation, we create new estimates of state-level support for eight policies, including civil unions and nondiscrimination laws. We differentiate between responsiveness to opinion and congruence with opinion majorities. We find a high degree of responsiveness, controlling for interest group pressure and the ideology of voters and elected officials. Policy salience strongly increases the influence of policy-specific opinion (directly and relative to general voter ideology). There is, however, a surprising amount of noncongruence—for some policies, even clear supermajority support seems insufficient for adoption. When noncongruent, policy tends to be more conservative than desired by voters; that is, there is little progay policy bias. We find little to no evidence that state political institutions affect policy responsiveness or congruence.