A brief note on today’s Essential Report poll on same-sex marriage.

There’s been some recent analysis in the United States about the gender gap over same-sex marriage (for example, here), with one Gallup poll showing American women significantly stronger in their support than American males: 56% of women support it compared to 42% of men.

A recent Galaxy poll, with different numbers, suggested a similar divide here in Australia.

Today’s Essential Report is more in line with American numbers: 61% of Australian women support same-sex marriage compared to 46% of men.

It’s one of the starker gender gaps I’ve seen in polling; while there are differences, men and women don’t tend to vary a great deal in their responses on public policy issues. Julia Gillard as Prime Minister initially had much stronger positive appeal to female voters, but I don’t recall the gender gap reaching 15 points, and when she fell, she fell with both men and women, though even now women prefer Ms Gillard as PM over Mr Abbott, while the latter has a big lead with men.

Not unexpectedly (though, why?) younger people are more supportive; only 34% of over-65s support same-sex marriage; 61% of 18-24 year olds support it. Victorians (60%) are significantly more supportive than Queenslanders (48%); NSW is in-between on 54%. Queensland’s level of opposition is actually the same as NSW, but it has a much higher level of Don’t Knows — 17%. The other state sample sizes are too small to be valid.  Support’s also highest among high income earners.