A small majority of California voters supports the right of same-sex couples to marry, but by a much larger margin, voters oppose efforts to place the issue back on the ballot next year, a new Los Angeles Times/University of Southern California poll has found.

Views on same-sex marriage were sharply polarized, with 66 percent of Democrats backing it, and 71 percent of Republicans in opposition. Nonpartisan voters were less enthusiastic than Democrats but still backed it, 59 percent to 34 percent. Overall, 51 percent of California voters favored marriage rights for gay couples, and 43 percent were opposed.

Strikingly, however, almost three in five Californians did not want to revisit the issue in 2010, just one election cycle after it last hit the ballot. In November of 2008, Californians voted 52 percent to 48 percent to limit marriage to a man and a woman.

The California findings come from a new Los Angeles Times/University of Southern California College of Letters, Arts and Sciences poll. The survey included 1,500 registered voters from Oct. 27 through Nov. 3. The results have a margin of error of plus or minus 2.6 percentage points.

The survey showed that same-sex marriage continues to reverberate differently along racial and generational lines. A little more than half of whites backed it, while slightly fewer than half of blacks and Latinos did. All three groups, however, opposed having to vote on it in 2010.

Young voters continued to be far more supportive of marriage rights than their elders.

Among those ages 18 to 29, 71 percent said they supported same-sex marriage; among those 65 and older, 37 percent favored it. Younger voters were also one of the few groups who backed putting it on the 2010 ballot.

Washington correspondent Daniel Malloy writes the "Pittsburgh On The Potomac" blog exclusively at PG+, a members-only web site of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Our introduction to PG+ gives you all the details.