No Dems, Trans People Didn’t Lose You the Election
After attacks on the trans community in the wake of the election, Riki Wilchins takes a look at the actual data.
by Riki Wilchins
As usual when the Democrats lose an election and the Republicans have ginned up their base by attacking a minority the Circular Firing Squad has been called into action, this time with us in the middle.
Meanwhile the NYTimes, right on cue, is suggesting trans people need to stop being so “confrontational” and acting as if they’re being scapegoated and someone is taking away their rights…just when the Times is publicly scapegoating them and Republicans are poised to take away their rights.
Exhibit A—and also Exhibits B, C, and D—in the Who Lost Kamala’s Election witch-hunt is the fact that Republicans’ closing argument was spending hundreds of millions on anti-trans ads.
But here’s the thing. As you can see from my post on current polling, only about 12% of Republicans think trans rights is “Extremely Important.” That figure rises to 25% of Democrats, but it’s safe to say that maybe half or so more of those are pro not con trans rights.
Looked at another way, according to a recent Gallup poll, transgender rights was ranked DEAD LAST among 25 key issues that voters faced in the election.
So why would Republicans dump nearly a quarter of a billion dollars into an issue ranked dead last by nearly everyone?
As I wrote in my book, “When Texas Came for Our Kids: How Evangelical Extremists Launched a war on Transgender Teens,” while the country as a whole has been become more accepting, a 2021 PRRI poll found that just 21% of white evangelicals were comfortable knowing someone transgender.
The following year, a 2022 Pew poll found that white evangelicals were also the only religious group in which a majority felt that transgender acceptance had “gone too far.” Nearly three quarters (72%) also felt transgender acceptance had moved too quickly.
Over two-thirds (68%) of white evangelicals also favored “Don’t Say Trans” laws for public schools, as opposed to less than half of other white Protestants (49%). In other words, they are almost half as opposed to trans people as other white Protestants.
Moreover, in the years after the whole nation rallied against North Caroline’s notorious bathroom bill, HB 2, Washington Post polling found that white evangelical support for anti-trans bathroom bills more than doubled to 87%.
A doubling of any public opinion over just six years is highly unusual. It’s a sign that the more they are exposed to trans people, the more they don’t like them.
So while the country as a whole and other Christians specifically are becoming more tolerant of transgender people, more comfortable knowing them personally, and more supportive of their civil rights, the opposite is true for white evangelicals. They don’t know trans people, don’t want to know them, think they should have fewer civil rights, and are hostile to the ones they have.
The takeaway is, if you had a quarter billion to put into one final hail Mary to turn out voters in a close base election, you would not turn to trans rights, which no one seems to think is an important issue, unless you were trying to motivate white evangelicals.
And that is likely why $215m was spent on the issue in the closing months.
It wasn’t to peel off a few Democratic suburban moms in battleground states who are uncomfortable with their daughters playing third grade soccer with a trans girl.
It was to do what the Christian Right always does: ignite a moral panic and then pour gasoline on the flames.
There are not two political parties anymore: there is one political party, and one religious party.
So no, Dems, trans people weren’t the losing political issue here. It wasn’t even a political defeat. It was a religious defeat. We lost to a resurgent white Christian nationalist in what is increasingly a religious crusade to impose Biblical views on every facet of American society and government.
Riki Wilchins writes regularly on trans issues and politics for Assigned Media and for her own blog at www.medium.com/@rikiwilchins, where this essay originally appeared.