Tagged: gay marriage

Republicans rule rural areas, while any Democrat can count on running up big margins in most of the large cities in the country. That has left the suburbs as the main partisan battleground.

For several election cycles now, the presidency has been won or lost based on the vote among suburbanites in a few key states. That's likely to be true again this November.

And some political observers believe that President Obama took the calculated risk that his newfound support for gay marriage rights will boost his campaign in these all-important counties.

(This post has been revised.)

If anything could predictably induce torrents of Internet reaction, it would be a U.S. president making the surprise disclosure that he supports same-sex marriage. And so it has been following President Obama's Wednesday ABC News interview in which he said he personally backs gay marriage.

The 2012 presidential election was supposed to be about the economy, and even with President Obama's historic decision to make it known Wednesday that he supports same-sex marriage, that is still likely to be true.

But the president's decision to announce in an ABC News interview that he personally backs gay marriage could mean that at least one social issue may take a more prominent role in the election-year spotlight.

Kansas City, Mo. – Gay and lesbian couples who consider themselves married, whether they legally are married or not,will be counted that way in the current census. That marks a shift from previous years.

In the last census, some 600,000 same sex couples check the married box, but when the data was reported, they were deemed unmarried partners. Gay rights groups lobbied Congress to change that in the current census.

Maria Carter spoke with Edward San Filippo from the US Census bureau about the changes in 2010 Census.