It turns out that in at least some cases, the right wing strategy of putting anti-gay initatives on the ballot in order to generate conservative voter turnout, is backfiring!
Wisconsin is one of the states that had an anti-gay initiative on the ballot. Students at many of the UW System campuses registered to vote and voted in extremely high numbers, mostly to vote AGAINST the anti-gay initiative. (Thanks, students!)
The students also voted for Democrats, and were the margin of victory in 2 State Senate seats (resulting in a change to Democratic control of the Wisconsin State Senate) AND in 4 formerly-Republican-held State Assembly seats.

Unfortunately, their numbers weren’t quite enough to defeat the anti-gay ballot measure, but at least there’s a silver lining. And I am THRILLED that the anti-gay intititives are starting to backfire on the right wing!!!

I don’t know the politics or the districts well enough in the other states that had those kinds of initiatives on the ballot to say that the same thing happened there too. I suspect it did, at least in states like Colorado & South Dakota, and I think it had a significant impact on Democratic voter turnout in Northern Virginia.

So take that, haters. Your strategy didn’t work this time! 🙂