A new poll shows reduced support for same-sex marriage compared to other recent surveys, as multiple polls that have found a supermajority of Americans back same-sex marriage continue to record declines from the record highs measured in recent years.
The Economist/YouGov poll, released Tuesday, was based on responses from 1,559 U.S. adults collected between July 25–27, with a margin of error of ±3.3 percentage points. The survey asked Americans for their opinions on a wide range of issues, including the legality of same-sex marriage.
Same-sex marriage has been legal in all 50 states since the U.S. Supreme Court's 2015 decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, which ruled state bans on same-sex marriage unconstitutional. In 2022, then-President Joe Biden signed the Respect for Marriage Act, codifying the Obergefell decision into federal law.
The survey found that 54% of Americans believe same-sex marriage should be legal, while 32% think it shouldn't be. The remaining 13% said they were "not sure."
While 54% still constitutes majority support, and a significantly larger share of respondents favor same-sex marriage than oppose it, that figure is noticeably lower than support measured in other recent public opinion surveys. In a poll published earlier this year, the Public Religion Research Institute pegged support for same-sex marriage at 65%, down from a high of 69% in 2022.
The most recent Gallup poll asking Americans for their views on LGBT-related issues, released in June, 65% of respondents supported same-sex marriage, while 32% opposed it. This marked a decline from the record high of 71% support in 2022 and 2023.
Tony Perkins, president of the socially conservative Family Research Council, addressed the decline reflected in the Gallup poll in an op-ed published by The Christian Post. "The promise of 'marriage equality' was that it was simply about allowing committed same-sex couples to formalize their relationships. Americans were assured that nothing else would change," he wrote. "But that is not what happened."
Perkins pointed to "pride parades in major cities where public nudity and sexually explicit displays are celebrated in full view of families and children," as well as "major corporations, universities, and professional sports organizations pressuring employees and athletes to affirm an ever-expanding list of sexual identities" and "a growing commercial surrogacy industry that intentionally deprives children of either their mother, their father, or both" as reasons he believes public support for same-sex marriage is falling.
He also cited the performance of gender transition procedures on trans-identified youth as well as the allowance of trans-identified males in women’s spaces and women’s sports as additional factors that have caused support for same-sex marriage to decline.
“Once marriage is detached from the complementary union of man and woman, it becomes increasingly difficult to explain why mothers and fathers matter, why men and women are different, or why children have a right to both,” he concluded.
Recent polls from The Economist/YouGov have consistently shown lower support for same-sex marriage than other surveys, with support pegged as low as 51% and opposition measured as high as 34% in May 2026 and support measured as high as 55% in March, January and December 2025.
