Repeal in 2012?

I am increasingly comfortable with the idea of a ballot initiative to remove the anti-same sex marriage amendment from the Colorado State Constitution. I've looked at the numbers myself and read an analysis by Nate Silver of fivethirtyeight.com that is even more optimistic than my own. He has the break over point as being in 2010, that is if the anti-gay marriage initiative was on the ballot next year rather than back in 2006 it would have failed. My own numbers seem to be a bit more conservative, I put the break over year as being 2014.

The thing is that with all these numbers the situation at the time can overwhelm demographics. I mean by this that even if Nate is right that we could have a lackluster liberal turn out in 2010 in Colorado due to uninspiring candidates or disillusionment with the folks we elected last time.

My impression is that the best early date would be 2012 if President Obama is popular and we could reasonably expect high turn out among gay allies. If not we'd have to put it off until 2014 or 2016. The same would seem to hold true with California, which Nate Silver puts in the same category as Colorado. Personally I think that California is a bit more likely to get an early date done due to the gay rights groups out there being fired up to win and on the ball with figuring out how to run a better campaign.

And if it succeeds it might finally give everyone a reason to approve of higher numbers to change the constitutions of both states.