I'm sorry, but this really pisses me off. The problem with getting good numbers is that they invariably take time to come in. In the meantime, people are happy to run off and trumpet their half-cocked theories--unchallenged--to anyone who's listening. I've tried to be measured and sensitive on this. But frankly, the scapegoating of black people for the failure passage of Prop 8 has been a travesty. Anyone who doubts that needs to read this report. A few of the conclusions are as follows.
1.) The 70 percent figure for black support of Prop 8 is wildly overblown, and in conflict with all the other polling done. The study concludes that 58 percent is a more likely number. To put that in context, the study also concludes that 59 percent of Latinos supported prop 8. That isn't one-up-manship--it just means we were about the same.
2.) Black people almost certainly did not account for 10 percent of the voters on Prop 8, they accounted for seven percent
3.) 58 percent is still higher than the 52 percent for the state, as a whole, but that difference is almost entirely accounted for by the fact that no ethnic group in California is as religiously devout as (as measured by church attendance) African-Americans.