On or around January 17, 2009, three presbyteries voted YES on 08-B: New Jersey, Kansas, and Iowa. Below is a portion of the analysis that I posted to the open morelightpresbyterians email list.
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I managed to find an old HTML file that lists 01-A (delete-B) vote counts from 2001-2002, so I was able to run some comparisons for these votes.
In 2 cases the More Light movement significantly increased the percentage of support, and in one case it's basically a wash:
Newton 2001-2: 82 yes, 34 no --> 70.7% YES to delete B
Newton 2009: 63 yes, 16 no --> 79.7% YES
Des Moines 2001-2: 69 yes, 46 no --> 60.0% YES
Des Moines 2009: 52 yes, 37 no --> 58.4% YES
North Kansas 2001-2: 73 yes, 49 no --> 59.8% YES
North Kansas 2009: 71 yes, 23 no --> 75.5% YES
So the numbers suggest that in "safe" presbyteries, we can win by increasing margins. However notice that the increasing margins happened primarily because the number of "no" votes dropped tremendously, in Newton and North Kansas. The larger question is how much the total pro-LGBT percent change will be in "swing" presbyteries.
The notes I have say that the overall presbytery "human" vote count was 43% YES (to delete B) in 2001-2, so it was 57% NO. If my rule of thumb that "we get about 1% shift per year" holds, that means that it could be very close. So it could all come down to get-out-the-vote efforts in the swing presbyteries.
- Bruce
