“Republicans are betting big on their anti-trans obsession, and it’s not paying off.”
This article published by Erin In The Morning, a reader-supported publication. Consider becoming a subscriber.
U.S. voters think Democrats, not Republicans, are best equipped to “handle transgender rights,” according to the latest polling from YouGov and The Economist.
Of the 1,500 respondents, 52% said Democrats would be better at addressing trans rights; 23% said they thought Republicans would be better; 14% saw “no difference,” and 11% were unsure.
Democrats ranked higher on this front among college-educated voters, young voters (age 18-29), women, and Black and Hispanic voters. Meanwhile, Democrats were a slightly less popular choice—but still the overwhelming plurality—to take on the task among white voters, men, and those without a college degree.
These polls are the latest sign in a wave of reckoning for the Republican Party. Antagonizing transgender Americans, it seems, cannot alone win elections.
Just last month, polling from The 19th found voters were increasingly fed up with how much Republicans (and Democrats, for that matter) talk about trans kids. Furthermore, it found that bans on gender-affirming care were relatively unpopular. Even among Republicans, the survey found that 42% of respondents opposed banning gender affirming care for youth.
It’s no surprise that Republican strategists are waking up to this and warning candidates to pivot to kitchen-table issues.
A recent strategy memo from the conservative advocacy group, the American Principles Project, said that focusing on trans issues alone “may not be sufficient.”
“Republicans must also make the case to families on what they plan to do to help improve their economic standing,” it said.
This is not to trivialize the still very real, very dire rightward shift in American politics that has come to dominate the narrative around trans people. That same memo from the APP said that “recent message testing we have conducted in several key swing states suggest that [Democrats] remain vulnerable on culture-war issues, particularly in their support for transgender ideology and so-called ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ (DEI) policies.”
Another YouGov/Pablo Torre Finds Out/Bulwark poll from the last month found that the majority of Americans “strongly oppose” trans-inclusive sports policies that allow athletes to compete on a team that matches their gender identity instead of their sex assigned at birth. But that same survey found that more people thought athletic organizations, not the government, should be responsible for setting those policies.
However, in October, three more major polls exhibited more of the same. Navigator Research, AP-NORC and ABC News/Washington Post/Ipsos found that voters trust Democrats on trans issues. But even more than that—most said they just don’t care. It ranked dead last on their list of priorities, with cost of living, the economy, and health care being the priority. And half of Americans said policies about trans people were “unimportant” or inconsequential to how they plan to cast their vote.
That’s also why Tyler Hack, executive director of the Christopher Street Project—which works to elect trans-allied candidates to office—said the recent YouGov poll was unsurprising.
“Republicans are betting big on their anti-trans obsession, and it’s not paying off,” Hack told Erin in the Morning. “This poll reinforces what we’ve known all along: standing up for trans people is both the right thing to do and a fight Democrats can win. Let’s bring it home.”
