LITTLE ROCK - Eight of 10 Arkansas voters support proposed Amendment 3, which would define marriage as only between a man and woman, according to a new poll by the Arkansas News Bureau and Stephens Media Group.
Seventeen percent said they oppose the measure.
The proposal also is supported across party lines with 75 percent of those claiming to be Democrats and 86 percent of Republicans supporting it.
The big numbers don't surprise political scientists because Arkansas is located in the Bible Belt, where voters generally attend church on a regular basis and tend to be more conservative on social issues.
"They see it as a direct frontal attack on family and the Judeo-Christian heritage," said Todd Shields, chairman of the political science department at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville.
Ouachita Baptist University political scientist Hal Bass said it's difficult to argue against Amendment 3.
"That's a hard one to say no to given the Arkansas culture," he said. "It's a very difficult amendment to take a principled stand against without appearing to somehow embrace gay marriage."
Opponents filed a legal challenge to the proposal saying it was misleading and vague and should not be on the Nov. 2 ballot. The state Supreme Court, however, ruled last week that the measure's ballot title and name are sufficient and that it should remain on the ballot.
While opponents of the proposal argue that the measure is not needed because Arkansas already has a state law banning same sex marriages, Bass said supporters of Amendment 3 don't think that is enough.
"I think we're a very culturally conservative state and I think there is a real fear that somehow liberal judges would impose some sort of unacceptable standard on Arkansas," he said. "Supporters see (Amendment 3) as some sort of firewall against it."
The poll of 502 randomly selected, likely voters was conducted Oct. 4-6. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.5 percentage points. Opinion Research Associates Inc. of Little Rock conducted the poll.
Proposed Amendment 3 would declare "marriage consists only of one man and one woman" and that any "legal status for unmarried persons which is identical or substantially similar to marital status shall not be valid."
Also, under the proposal, the state would not recognize any legal arrangement identical or substantially similar to marriage.
Jerry Cox, president of the Arkansas Marriage Amendment Committee, which collected more than 200,000 signatures to get the proposal on the ballot, said he was pleased with the poll results.
"That's very good news," he said, noting that voters in Louisiana and Missouri also recently passed similar amendments. The proposal in Louisiana, however, has been ruled unconstitutional by a state court judge who said backers listed multiple topics in one ballot issue - a violation of the state constitution. That decision is now being appealed.
"We believed all along that the vast majority of the people in Arkansas support marriage between one man and one woman," Cox said.
While the measure has overwhelming support across all four congressional districts in the state, people living in rural areas support the amendment to a higher degree than those in more urban areas, according to the poll results.
In the 3rd District of Northwest Arkansas, 71 percent said they support Amendment 3 and 27 percent said they oppose it. In the 2nd District, where Little Rock is located, 74 percent said they support the proposal and 20 percent oppose it.
Eighty-eight percent of those polled in the 1st District, which is East Arkansas, support the measure, while 10 percent said they oppose it. In the 4th District, South Arkansas, 87 percent said they support Amendment 3 and 12 percent oppose it.
Bass said much of the opposition in Northwest Arkansas probably comes from Fayetteville, which is where the University of Arkansas is located.
"There is no question that Arkansas has a strong conservative presence in Northwest Arkansas, but there is also a pocket of liberal presence," he said. "The Fayetteville culture is going to be a more tolerant one than, I would say, anywhere in the state. In both (Fayetteville and Little Rock) you are probably going to have a more visible and perhaps less threatening gay presence."
Several other states, including Mississippi and Oklahoma, have similar anti-gay marriage measures on the November ballot.
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