In California, some pollsters are saying that Democrats are experiencing a boost from young voters motivated by Proposition 19, California's marijuana legalization initiative, on the ballot in November. Strategists are considering pushing for similar initiatives in 2012 for battleground states like neighboring Colorado and Nevada in an effort to motivate a typically apathetic but largely liberal population of marijuana supporters.
Tom Jensen, director of Democratic firm Public Policy Polling, suggests that voters under the age of 45 are more likely to turn out in the California elections and support Proposition 19, and that that could bolster Jerry Brown for governor and Barbara Boxer for Senate. But, he cautions, the party divide among these young voters isn't as distinct as stereotype would suggest.
"56% of Democrats support it to 28% opposed and 30% of Republicans support it with 57% opposed," Jensen writes at Public Policy Polling's blog. "That's a lot more division within the ranks of both parties than we're seeing on a lot of stuff."
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Libertarians also tend to support legalization, but trend more conservative than their Bob Marley-listening counterparts. Interestingly, however, not all medical marijuana patients are in favor of complete legalization, arguing it would allow individual counties and townships to restrict access to their therapeutic THC.While marijuana's beneficial side effects for the Democratic Party remain hazy, the outlook for cannabis itself is increasingly sunny. The fate of Prop. 19 is murky, but decriminalization continues to spread, and the idea of ballot initiatives is cropping up in more states. And the Democratic Party's interest in the stoner vote shows how far the concept of legalization has begun to penetrate the mainstream.
Read more at The Wall Street Journal.
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