LGBTQ+ issues aren’t the top concern for queer voters. They still support Joe Biden.
LGBTQ+ adults overwhelmingly favor President Joe Biden – and Democrats generally – over former President Donald Trump and Republicans, a new survey has found. But while queer respondents also said the Democratic Party should be doing more to fight anti-LGBTQ+ legislation, the survey also revealed that LGBTQ+ issues aren’t the most important thing on queer voters’ minds leading into the November general elections.
A survey of 873 LGBTQ+ adults conducted by Data for Progress found that 57% of respondents had a favorable view of the Democratic Party and 51% had a favorable view of Biden. Comparatively, only 20% of respondents had a favorable view of the Republican Party and only 22% had a favorable view of Trump.
Related:
Generally, Black respondents and women have higher rates of unfavorable views toward Trump and Republicans.
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Trans respondents were more likely than cisgender ones to say that the Biden Administration is doing worse than they expected. While 46% of cis respondents said the Biden administration is doing worse than expected, that percentage was 52% for trans respondents.
Approximately 70% percent of LGBTQ+ people who identify as a Democrat, including 81% of Democratic transgender adults, also say the Democratic Party should be doing more to protect queer Americans from anti-LGBTQ+ legislation. The younger the respondent, the more likely they were to feel this way.
However, when asked about the top issues they consider when deciding who to vote for, queer adults ranked LGBTQ+ issues third behind “the economy, jobs, and inflation” and “other.” The response suggests that a majority of LGBTQ+ voters are not “single-issue voters” and may be especially focused on economic issues since LGBTQ+ workers continue to earn about 90 cents for every dollar that cisgender and heterosexual workers earn, according to the Human Rights Campaign.
Trans respondents, however, ranked LGBTQ+ issues as the top issue they consider when voting. Approximately 50% ranked queer issues as their top consideration, compared to just 11% of cisgender respondents who did the same. Generally speaking, younger respondents said they consider LGBTQ+ issues more often when voting than older respondents.
Interesting, majorities of LGBTQ+ voters, regardless of age, said they believe that neither the Republican nor the Democratic parties care much about people like them. Despite this, majorities of LGBTQ+ voters also said they felt enthusiastic about voting in the 2024 election. Approximately 61% percent of all respondents expressed such enthusiasm, though that enthusiasm was generally lower among younger voters.
The survey’s findings align with a March 2023 survey that found that LGBTQ+ voters overwhelmingly support Biden. That same survey found that a majority of LGBTQ+ voters said they plan to vote in the 2024 elections and that both LGBTQ+ and non-LGBTQ+ voters oppose Republicans’ relentless anti-trans campaign.
A more recent survey from last March found that Republican anti-LGBTQ+ legislation has pushed moderate LGBTQ+ voters more toward Democrats. Another survey from September 2023 found that majorities of voters from all political parties oppose Republican anti-LGBTQ+ school policies, including banning books and having gender-verification checks for school sports.
“Overall, the reason that LGBTQ people seem to vote in large numbers for Democrats is because, unfortunately, today’s Republican Party has made LGBTQ equality a partisan issue,” Zeke Stokes, a GLAAD consultant, told ABC. “There are LGBTQ people on all places of the ideological perspective when it comes to what we would traditionally consider conservative to liberal in this country. But we’ve got one party, unfortunately, who’s put a target on our backs, in order to appeal to a minority of their base.”
