How did LGBT Americans vote in election? Exit poll finds significant shift from 2020
In the 2024 election, President-elect Donald Trump made inroads with multiple demographics that traditionally vote for Democrats, including young and Latino voters.
But, LGBT voters were not one of them, exit polls suggest.
Among lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender voters, 86% cast their ballots for Vice President Kamala Harris, while 13% voted for Trump, according to NBC News exit polls.
These figures mark Trump’s worst-ever performance with LGBT voters — who make up about 8% of the population.
In 2020, 64% of LGBT voters supported Joe Biden, while 27% supported Trump. And in 2016, 77% of LGBT voters cast their ballots for Hillary Clinton, while 14% voted for Trump, according to exit polls.
This shift away from Trump could have been fueled by the GOP’s “very clear anti-trans agenda” and “worries of rollbacks on marriage equality post Roe v. Wade,” Alison Gash, a professor of political science at the University of Oregon, told McClatchy News.
The results come after a campaign season in which Trump leaned into anti-transgender messaging.
“We will get … transgender insanity the hell out of our schools,” he told the crowd at a recent New York City rally, according to The Associated Press.
His campaign also spent millions of dollars on anti-trans advertisements in the lead-up to the election, some of which tapped into concerns about transgender people in women’s sports and about government-funded transition surgeries in prisons, according to The New York Times.
One of the ads ended with the line: “Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you.”
The president-elect also made disparaging comments about members of the broader LGBT community.
For example, he repeatedly called CNN anchor Anderson Cooper, a gay man, “Allison Cooper,” according to The Associated Press.
And, throughout his political career, he has signaled conflicting views on LGBT rights, according to CBS News. In 2016, he became the first Republican presidential nominee to pledge to protect the LGBT community during his Republican National Committee speech. He also said during the campaign that he would “’strongly consider’ appointing Supreme Court justices who would overturn the 2015 ruling that legalized same-sex marriages.”
In the lead-up to the 2024 election, his running mate, Vice President-elect JD Vance, predicted that Trump could perform well with certain LGBT voters.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if me and Trump won, just, the normal gay guy vote, because, they just wanted to be left the hell alone, and now you have all this crazy stuff on top of it,” Vance said in a podcast with Joe Rogan released on Oct. 31.