Read the comments from our election day coverage on Prop. 8

Yes on Prop 8 passes

Attorneys ask Supreme Court to invalidate Prop 8

Prop. 8 opponents won't give up

The passing of Proposition 8 surprised same-sex couples planning a November wedding and pundits who had expected the gay marriage ban to fail.

The voter initiative that defines marriage as between a man and woman received support from 52 percent of California voters.

Becky Goodwin, who married her partner of seven years, Gwen, on June 18, said she was flabbergasted by the voters' decision.

“I'm angry and upset and I don't understand,” the La Quinta resident said. “I've been crying all morning.”

Same-sex marriage is an issue that resonates with many locally as the Palm Springs area boasts one of the largest gay populations per capita in the U.S. and is renowned for its gay-friendly businesses and events.

More than 1,200 gay and lesbian couples have married in the Coachella Valley since the Supreme Court lifted the 2000 ban this summer.

Polls had indicated for weeks that the voter initiative was headed for defeat, although the latest surveys showed the gap closing.

Political pundits attributed the results to:

The Democratic get-out- the-vote efforts, which turned out large numbers of Latinos and blacks, who traditionally are socially conservative.

The amendment's wording could have confused voters.

Early voting, which could have skewed the polling results because public opinion was still shifting.

With polls oscillating between passage and failure, politicos said the surveys indicated a closer race than conventional wisdom assumed.

“The most surprising for the night for sure,” said John Matsusaka, president of the Initiative & Referendum Institute at University of Southern California that has looked at initiatives nationwide since 1998. “The turnout looked different than those surveys.”

Last month, Matsusaka predicted voters were poised to reject the same-sex marriage ban.

These political watchers blamed the support for President-elect Barack Obama, with the scuttlebutt being that the Yes on 8 campaign was secretly rooting for a large minority turnout.

“All of this made predictions on this issue very hard because you couldn't apply the normal turnout predictions,” said Bruce Cain, director of UC Berkeley's Washington Center.

“I thought it had a chance of going down because you had a court weigh in and argue there wasn't any real good reason to deny them benefits,” Cain said. “I would have thought it would have given people more cover to change their mind on this.”

‘Snapshots in time'

Eight years ago, voters overwhelmingly approved Proposition 22, which created the ban the Supreme Court found unconstitutional in May. Tuesday night's close results reflect a growing opinion shift that favors marriage equality.

While unexpected, the election results did not surprise everyone.

“They weren't wrong,” said Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, a political analyst. “Polls are polls. They're snapshots in time. Polls are not predictive no matter what people would like to sell you.”

Early in the presidential campaign, political pundits speculated whether Obama would suffer from the “Bradley effect,” which attempts to explain the discrepancies between opinion polls and election results in campaigns when white and minority candidates square off.

Although dismissed by some, the theory suggests white voters will give inaccurate responses to pollsters to conceal bigoted and prejudiced attitudes. None of the political analysts believed the polls hid discriminatory attitudes toward gays and lesbians.

“The so-called Bradley effect really doesn't exist,” Bebitch Jeffe said.

What's next

Tuesday's vote likely will not be the last say on this issue.

A group of attorneys filed a writ of petition with the state Supreme Court on Wednesday as the results continued to trickle in, requesting that the justices invalidate Proposition 8, saying the measure guts equal protection laws enshrined in the constitution. Read more about this on page B8

Staff writers Denise Goolsby and Jake Henshaw contributed to this report.