The Most Homophobic County in Wisconsin

Yesterday Wisconsin overwhelmingly voted for a broadly drawn state constitutional amendment that bans both gay marriage and anything "substantially similar to that of marriage for unmarried individuals", meaning civil unions and possibly even domestic partner benefits. The results were 1,259,489 (59.4%) in favor of the amendment, and 860,996 (40.6%) opposed.



(Click on map for larger version)

Red is support for the marriage amendment, blue is opposition. And the single most homophobic county in Wisconsin is ... Florence County! That's right, Florence County, in northeast Wisconsin, wins the prize as the very worst of the worst, a true bastion of hate and intolerance. Although, as you can see from the map, the competition was mighty tough, with a half-dozen other counties close behind.

Only Dane County voted to oppose the amendment, although La Crosse County was evenly split, and Iowa, Eau Claire, Portage, and Menominee Counties weren't too bad. Sadly, Milwaukee County supported the amendment 55% to 45%.

The CNN exit poll had some interesting results. The cross-tabs show that support for the amendment was most strongly correlated with church attendance, ideology, and support for George Bush. Democrats opposed the amendment 65% to 35%, and Republicans supported it 84% to 16%. Independents split right down the middle.

The results in Milwaukee County are explained at least in part by the fact that support depends on race, with blacks significantly more likely to favor of the amendment than whites, although, strangely enough, CNN has deleted that data from the poll. It was there last night, but now it's gone.

The lone bright spot in all this is that support depended strongly on age ranging from 40% for people under 30 to 67% among people 59 and older. Which means that in twenty years or so we might actually have a shot at overturning this disaster...