Former President Donald Trump’s campaign has spent more than $21 million on political advertisements attacking Vice President Kamala Harris this election cycle over her support of transgender rights — and stoking fears about transgender people’s presence in public life.
In an ad that has run nationally and in swing states and is circulating widely online, the Trump campaign takes aim at Harris’ prior support of gender-affirming care for people in prisons. It ends with the tagline: “Kamala is for they/them; President Trump is for you.”
A new report from Data for Progress out Thursday shows that voters across party lines believe these ads have gotten out of hand — and that they think Democrats are better equipped to handle LGBTQ+ issues than Republicans.
The progressive polling firm surveyed 1,216 likely U.S. voters about candidates’ stances on transgender rights. Respondents were asked whether they agreed or disagreed with a series of statements.
Asked if they viewed Republican candidates’ use of anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric in their campaigns as “sad and shameful,” 41% of Republicans and 58% of independent voters agreed. That compares to 38% of Republicans and 25% of independents who do not think it’s “shameful.”
The survey also found that 80% of all voters polled, across party lines, agreed that the two major parties should spend more time talking about the economy and inflation than issues related to transgender people. And 52% of voters trust the Democratic Party more than the GOP to handle trans issues, including a 39% plurality of independents.
This new data is consistent with other polling from Data for Progress earlier this year. In January, the firm asked a similar number of likely U.S. voters to rank issues most important to them. The economy and employment were at the top of the list, followed by climate change and health care. LGBTQ+ issues ranked last.
Trump and Republicans have made big bets this year that anti-trans rhetoric will not only help the top of the ticket, but will help them clinch several competitive races for seats in the House and Senate in what is projected to be the most expensive election of all time.
Republican expenditures targeting a minority group that by some counts makes up as little as 0.5% of the U.S. population have not borne fruit in the past. During the midterm elections in 2022, Republican candidates who ran campaigns heavy on anti-trans rhetoric, who used hateful language to describe transgender people or who called into question the science of gender-affirming care overwhelmingly lost. By contrast, LGBTQ+ candidates won at record-setting numbers, according to the Victory Institute, which works to elect LGBTQ+ candidates.
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Over each of the last two years, Republican-led state legislatures across the country have filed more than 500 bills targeting the LGBTQ+ community. They often have a particular focus on transgender children, limiting their access to certain sports teams and bathrooms, restricting LGBTQ+ topics in school curricula and banning gender-affirming care like puberty blockers and hormone therapy for minors.
Now 24 states have passed bans on gender-affirming care for minors and 25 states have passed bans on trans youth participating in sports that align with their gender identity, according to the Movement Advancement Project, a nonprofit research institution. The fate of gender-affirming care for young trans kids rests in a legal challenge that the Supreme Court will hear this December.
In the meantime, a majority of Democrats and 45% plurality of Republicans believe the government should have less involvement in the medical decisions transgender people make, according to the new Data for Progress survey. And a 48% plurality of Republicans said that the wave of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation was “too much” and that politicians were “playing political theater and using these bills as a wedge issue.”