Nate Silver, statistician extraordinaire, took the states in which a gay marriage ban was constitutionally struck down (as in Iowa), and came up with a statistical model. The timing of these events for each state, he says, is a factor of:
1. The year in which the amendment banning gay marriage was voted upon;
2. The percentage of adults in 2008 Gallup tracking surveys who said that religion was an important part of their daily lives;
3. The percentage of white evangelicals in the state.
Based on those factors and trends in those factors, Silver predicted when each of those 50 states would "go gay marriage". And the folks at Map Scroll turned Silver's data into a map. So here it is:
I find it somewhat odd that North Carolina portends to recognize gay marriages after West Virginia. West Virginia strikes me as the last state to fall. But even if West Virginia accepts gay marriages in, say, 2016, I think the jig is up, and all states will conform in one or two years after that.
I'm not sure about Alaska either……