Gallup Poll Finds Legal Marijuana Is More Popular Than Almost Anything Else

A poll released today by the Gallup organization finds 58% of Americans favor legalizing marijuana. It's the first time a clear majority has favored legalization since Gallup started asking the question in 1969.

The finding is remarkable because, these days, it's hard to find much of anything that 58% of Americans like.

I went back and looked through some other Gallup polls this year to find questions where more than 58% of the public took the affirmative position. Legal marijuana isn't as popular as universal gun background checks (83%) or legal sodomy (64%). But it's more popular than almost everything else.

More Americans want to legalize marijuana than think President Obama is doing a good job (44%), want to keep or expand Obamacare (38%), favored attacking Syria (36%), support a 20-cent gas tax increase to pay for infrastructure (29%), or like the Republican Party (28%).

And legal marijuana has more than five times as many supporters as Congress does (11%).