I haven't polled on the gay marriage issue, but plenty of others have and it would appear that the majority of Australians favour it, so I was surprised to receive a media release from the Australian Christian Lobby claiming overwhelming opposition.

The ACL release was based on the members of parliament who reported back to parliament today on research they conducted in their electorates.

Out of the 30 MPs who spoke, 18 opposed gay marriage. And there was some hard evidence presented.

According to the release:

..For example, in the Federal seat of Hinkler Paul Neville reported support for marriage staying the same was 595 to 14; in the seat of Dawson George Christensen reported 456 to 78; in the seat of O’Connor the member Tony Crook reported 523 to 115; in Deakin the member Mike Symon reported 1015 to 65, in Blair the member Shayne Neumann reported 580 to 115; in Cook Scott Morrison reported 850 to 50; in the seat of Cowan the member Luke Simpkins reported 903 to 103 and in Fowler the member Chris Hayes said 90 per cent of his electorate supported marriage.

These would appear to be straw polls so are of very uncertain provenance, however the numbers are overwhelming, and while some come from obviously conservative areas, a number of the seats are Labor as well.

So why do these vary so much from the scientific polls?

Part of the discrepancy might be in the way that the questions are worded.

But it also may be an issue of how strongly motivated voters are by the issue. This is supported by the fact that the online newspaper polls appear to be closer than the properly randomised ones.

So while the professional pollsters are accurately measuring the response you get when you ask a random sample of Australians, what they aren't capturing is whether these people care very much about the issue at all.

When a straw poll goes up online, people opt-in, and those with the strongest interest are more likely to opt in. So in this case, what the parliamentarians' research is telling them is that while a whole lot of people think same-sex marriage a good idea, most of them are not interested in it as a voting issue.

Those who are interested in it as a voting issue are in general more likely to be opposed.

Which explains why both the major political parties are opposed to it, despite the media portraying it as being overwhelmingly popular. Seats could be at play if they weren't.

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