A new survey focused on voters’ opinions about transgender rights has uncovered good news for the LGBTQ+ community and confirmation that the Harris-Walz campaign is on the right track when it comes to their focus on “fundamental freedoms.”
In the midst of a flood of disparaging ads about transgender people released by the Trump campaign and his allies and other MAGA Republican candidates, Data for Progress asked voters if transgender people deserve to be treated with dignity and respect. An overwhelming number of all voters, 74%, strongly or somewhat agreed, including 58% of Republicans.
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The Trump campaign has spent tens of millions of dollars on TV advertising directed at the Republican base, using Kamala Harris’ support for transgender rights to cast her as “radical” and out of touch with mainstream voters. The hateful ads have played relentlessly in swing state markets and nationally during broadcasts popular with men, like NFL games.
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They all end with the same ominous message that Trump screamed on social last Sunday with the latest spot: “KAMALA’S AGENDA IS THEY/THEM—NOT YOU!”
But the strategy looks doomed for failure based on respondents’ opinions in the survey.
Asked if the “government should be less involved in regulating what transgender people are allowed to do, including the health care they can receive,” 58% of voters agreed, including more Republicans who agreed than those who didn’t. Sixty-one percent of independents agreed too.
Majorities of men, women, college-educated and non-college educated, Black, white, and Latino voters all agreed strongly or somewhat that “political attack ads against the transgender community have gotten mean-spirited and out of hand.”
A plurality of Republicans even agreed strongly or somewhat that “Republican candidates using anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric as part of their campaigns is sad and shameful.”
Last night in her town hall appearance on CNN, Harris pivoted from a defense of her past statements in support of gender-affirming care to voters’ broader concerns, including the economy. That strategy is backed up by voters who say, “Democrats and Republicans should spend less time talking about transgender issues and more time talking about voters’ priority issues like the economy and inflation.” Republicans strongly agreed by 64%.
Harris has dismissed the Trump campaign’s focus on transgender issues as a distraction.
“Twenty million dollars on that ad,” Harris told Bret Baier in her contentious interview on Fox News last week, “on an issue that, as it relates to the biggest issues that affect the American people, is really quite remote.”
While the numbers back up Harris’ strategy of appealing to voters who believe “the government should stay out of people’s private lives,” she still has work to do. A majority of all voters in all groups agreed that statement was more important than enacting “new laws that restrict access to transgender health care and keep ‘biological boys’ out of girls’ sports,” save one: Republicans.
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