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In Honor of Pride Month: How the LGBTQ+ Community Voted [1]

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Date: 2025-06-01

Today marks the start of LGBTQ+ Pride Month (well until Trumplestilskin abolishes it with an executive order or something). In honor of that, I wanted to post some statistics of how the LGBTQ+ community voted in the the last presidential election:

Exit polls are not perfect, but wow, these numbers are something to be proud about! I admit I was a bit surprised when I looked at the numbers myself.

LGBT voters shifted even more solidly into the Democratic camp this year, according to the NBC News Exit Poll. Harris led President-elect Trump 86% to 12% among LGBT voters, the poll found. That’s a 15-point change from 2020, when Trump won 27% of the LGBT vote against Biden. Harris’ performance among LGBT voters was stronger than that of any Democratic candidate in the last five presidential elections. (emphasis mine) Although Republican vice presidential candidate Sen. JD Vance predicted that he and Trump would win the “normal gay guy vote,” the GOP presidential ticket captured fewer than 1 in 5 LGBT male voters, though that figure could also include bisexual and transgender men. According to the exit poll, 8% of American voters identified as LGBT in 2024. That’s the highest share on record. The percentage of the electorate identifying as LGBT has doubled since Barack Obama was elected president in 2008, when it was 4%.

Ugh, another JD vance cringe moment—but don’t let that detract from those wonderful polling numbers.

Interestingly, the Human Rights Campaign concluded with their polling that the anti-trans attack ads did not sway the election towards the Republicans but were still harmful and heinous:

This election cycle, MAGA politicians spent more than $150 million on heinous, hateful ads attacking the trans community, despite a long history of failure and extensive research showing these ads fail to move voters. This new poll confirms the ineffectiveness of these attacks. Nationally, 64% of voters recall seeing an anti-trans attack ad against Kamala Harris. But just 4%—dead last on this list— identify opposing surgeries for trans people and trans kids’ participation in sports as issues motivating them to vote. (This aligns with research Gallup found in September). In fact, when asked directly which candidate ”represents your views on transgender people,” voters pick Harris (52 to 40 percent). Backing up this new data are results we saw across the country where pro-equality candidates and referendums won despite an onslaught of anti-trans attacks, including Sarah McBride, who will become our nation’s first ever openly transgender member of Congress, U.S Sen. Tammy Baldwin, who won a third term from Wisconsinites, and pro-reproductive freedom ballot referendums like Proposition 1 in New York. While the attacks were once again ineffective from a political perspective, they caused tremendous harm to the transgender community already at high risk of mental health struggles and violent attacks.

Those are some interesting statistics from the HRC. I harbor some doubt about them, but they do provide an alternative point of view. Here was Kos’s recent take on this issue:

Trump’s most effective ad during the 2024 presidential race was simple: It showed Harris talking about access to gender-affirming surgery for prison inmates. Yet the ad wasn’t effective because of transphobia, as polling shows that Americans are generally supportive of the trans community. A 2022 Pew poll found that 64% of those surveyed supported protecting trans people from discrimination, with just 10% opposing. The problem with the ad was the perception it created—real or not—that Democrats care more about niche issues than the average American’s economic situation.

There are a lot of post-election voter demographics talked about on here, but for whatever reason, the LGBTQ+ community doesn’t seem to get enough attention. It should. Be proud that this community is part of the big tent who supported Harris and rebuked Trump.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/6/1/2325397/-In-Honor-of-Pride-Month-How-the-LGBTQ-Community-Voted?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web

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