Highest ever level of support for same-sex marriage recorded in new national poll

Support for same-sex marriage has reached its highest percentage ever recorded, with nearly 70 percent of Americans stating that they are in favor of allowing gay and lesbian couples to marry legally, according to the 11th annual American Values Survey.

The poll, conducted by the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) in partnership with the Brookings Institution, also showed that only 28 percent of Americans surveyed oppose same-sex marriage.

Support has increased as well across political parties, with 80 percent of Democrats, 76 percent of independents and 50 percent of Republicans polling in favor of same-sex marriage, according to the survey.

Religious denominations have also seen an increase in the percentage of people who are in favor of same-sex marriage. Seventy-nine percent of white mainline Protestants, 78 percent of Hispanic Catholics, 72 percent of religious non-Christians, 68 percent of Hispanic Protestants, 67 percent of white Catholics, 57 percent of Black Protestants and 56 percent of members of other Christian religious denominations are in support of same-sex marriage, the survey recorded.

White evangelicals were the only denomination where a majority of those surveyed said they were opposed to same-sex marriage, at 63 percent opposed to 34 percent in favor, according to the survey.

And 90 percent of religiously unaffiliated Americans were found to endorse same-sex marriage, according to the survey. 

The results of the survey, released on Monday, are on par with the growing trend toward acceptance of same-sex couples within the United States. Two in 3 Americans said they supported same-sex marriage in a Gallup poll released in June, which was then considered a record high. That percentage also matched a record-high from 2018.

The American Values Survey, which was conducted by PRRI from Sept. 9 to 22, has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.6 percentage points.