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other things, like a man wanting two or three wives. I believe in marriage. They could call it something else if they want to give it a different definition. But I don't think it's right and that's what I feel."
• The poll also found a slight increase in the share of Americans who say voting rights for minorities require legal protection, although the public is divided over whether such laws still are needed. Sixty percent of Democrats say those protections are still needed, compared with 40 percent of independents and 33 percent of Republicans.
• One potential influence was that the survey was conducted amid lawsuits and political rhetoric over the validity of voter identification laws in several states. The laws mainly have been backed by Republican lawmakers who say they want to combat voter fraud. Democrats, citing academic studies that found there is very little voter fraud, have called the laws thinly veiled attempts to make it harder for Democratic-leaning minority voters to cast ballots.
• Two areas in which there has been little change in public attitudes in spite of major events are gun control and President Barack Obama's health care overhaul.
• No matter that the Supreme Court upheld the health law, nearly three-fourths of Americans say the government should not have the power to require people to buy health insurance or pay a penalty. It didn't matter in the poll whether the penalty was described as a tax or a fine.
• The July 20 mass shooting at a suburban Denver movie theater that killed 12 people and wounded 58 others did not move opinion on gun rights, where 49 percent oppose gun control measures and 43 percent said limits on gun ownership would not infringe on the constitutional right to bear arms.
• Retired Army Col. Glenn Werther, 62, called the Colorado shootings a "horrible thing," but said gun control is not the answer to curbing violence. "There are crazy people out there. How you monitor that, I have no idea," said Werther, a resident of Broad Brook, Conn., and a member of the National Rifle Association. "People are going to get guns that should not have them."
• The National Constitution Center is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that operates a Philadelphia museum and other educational programs about the Constitution.
• The AP-NCC Poll was conducted by GfK Roper Public Affairs & Corporate Communications from Aug. 16-20, using landline and cellphone interviews with 1,006 randomly chosen adults. The margin of sampling error was plus or minus 3.9 percentage points.
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