Poll: 59% Of Americans Support Same-Sex Marriage

According to a NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, 59% of Americans support marriage equality, while only 33% oppose (8% said "Depends/Not sure").

This marks a dramatic shift in the past ten years alone.

In 2004, only 30 percent of Americans said they supported same-sex marriage, while 62 percent disagreed. Half of those polled at the time said they strongly opposed allowing gays and lesbians to marry.

Democratic pollster Fred Yang noted how quickly public opinion has shifted on the issue, even compared to interracial marriage, which is now almost universally accepted.

"It took about 25 years for interracial marriage to get from 30 percent support to 60 percent," he said. "It took same-sex marriage ten years."

The share of the public backing same-sex marriage has even jumped from just two years ago, when 53 percent of Americans backed it and 42 percent did not.

The jump in the last two years comes, in part, from three segments of society: Republicans (13% increase), senior (7% increase) and Hispanics (18% increase)