Democratic Candidates Must Beware of Betraying Queer Voters

New data from the Human Rights Campaign shows how much power LGBTQ voters have at the ballot box

Many column inches in our national newspapers have been written over the last several years extolling to Democratic candidates that they should abandon trans rights in order to win over centrist voters.

There's example after example after example of this from publications across the political spectrum, despite there being no evidence that doing so would even win over enough moderates to win close elections in purple states.

Many Democratic candidates have tried and all of them have failed.

A new set of data from the Human Rights Campaign might help explain why this strategy is such a loser electorally. According to their analysis, roughly 12% of the US population is some flavor of LGBTQ, with bisexuals leading the number at 7%.

Forty states, including many swing states, have more than 10% of their adult population as LGBTQ. Ohio, Michigan, Texas, and North Carolina are among the hotly contested states that feature at least 10% of the adult population as LGBTQ. Each of those states have also seen an anti-trans Democrat lose a race in the last 4 years.

Separate surveys have shown that voters in these identities are nearly uniformly more progressive than the overall voting base, and the overwhelming majority are also pro trans.

So what does that mean for Democratic party candidates?

Well, for one thing, they need to be wary of alienating queer and trans voters by adopting right wing framing on trans issues (like Ohio gubernatorial candidate Amy Acton did this cycle when she smeared trans women and girls as "men").

Using anti-trans rhetoric to appear more culturally connected to moderate and conservative voters may, at first blush, seem like a savvy political move, but it falls apart when you consider that you risk alienating up to 10% of the general voting base.

You might be sitting there thinking "who else will queer voters vote for?"

But this is the wrong calculation. The real answer is that these voters might simply not show up in the first place. If a Dem candidate is spewing the same anti-queer language as the Republican, what's the difference?

I suspect this has been what has happened to the previously mentioned anti-trans Democrats, even those facing longer odds in redder states. Though we don't know for sure, because gender identity and voter sexuality are frequently excluded from exit polling datasets.

So these questions are left in the realm of guesswork, but it's not hard to see how things could quickly fall apart when your queer base begins to crumble.

In a close election, every vote counts. Even more than that, you need your most progressive supporters out on the street organizing for you. You need them talking with their cishet friends in a positive way about your candidacy.

Calling trans women "men" to avoid a hard discussion about sports risks all of that queer support. I've argued that it's simply not worth that risk by appearing to adopt the trappings of your trans obsessed conservative opponent.

Polling has showed that trans issues are a low salience issue for the vast majority of voters, and softening your support for trans issues is unlikely to persuade wide swaths of people to vote for you.

Democrats in any race are going to be smeared as tranny-loving commies regardless of how many times you call trans women "men".

There's like ten people who will truly vote for the candidate who most hates trans people, and you're not winning those people over any time soon. The sooner Democrats and their consultants realize that, the better off they will be.

Thank you all for reading! I have a banger in mind for tomorrow's Sick Burns Friday post, so make sure you're subscribed to get past the paywall.