New Post Election Poll: Anti-Trans Ads Flop

WASHINGTON, D.C. —  New polling released today by the Human Rights Campaign (HRC)  – the nation’s largest lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LBGTQ+) civil rights organization – shows that LGBTQ+ and Equality Voters delivered massive margins for pro-equality candidates up and down the ballot while anti-trans attack ads backfired.  

“LGBTQ+ and Equality voters showed up in force and delivered massive margins at the ballot box, dramatically shifting the balance of power across the country,” said HRC President Kelley Robinson. “MAGA Republicans spent hundreds of millions in a desperate electoral strategy demonizing the transgender community and it backfired spectacularly. This poll makes it clear: attacking transgender Americans is a losing strategy.” 

Top findings from the poll, conducted by GQR include: 

Equality and LGBTQ+ Voters delivered overwhelming margins to Democrats at every level of the ballot.

The poll finds that 88% of Equality Voters backed Democratic candidates in the national House vote, a notable increase from 2024 (81 percent). Equality voters delivered the same level of support in the Senate and gubernatorial elections.

Equality voters, who make up 32% of the electorate, are a geographically diverse and influential voting block motivated by the advancement of LGBTQ+ equality. These voters are younger, more racially diverse, and more female than the general electorate. 

2026 exit polls used by the major national networks also found that the LGBTQ+ voters supported Democratic candidates by the second highest margin of any voter block (86%), just behind Black voters (90%). 

Attacks on transgender people failed to motivate voters at the ballot box. 

MAGA Republicans spent nearly $400 million on anti-trans attack ads to fuel their midterm election strategy. The poll found that half the country (47%) recall seeing ads attacking the transgender community. This figure was significantly higher in battleground races: 

• Congressional battleground: 55% of voters recall anti-trans attack ads
• Texas: 66% of voters recall anti-trans attack ads 
• Ohio: 72% of voters recall anti-trans attack ads

But this poll confirms what all pre-election polling showed: Trans issues were not what voters cared about. The top 3 issues for voters were corruption, inflation, and threats to democracy. The issue of "boys in girls’ sports and gender-changing surgery on children” did not resonate at all with Democrats (0 percent) or Independents (8 percent), and even among Republicans, this issue ranked less important than securing the border and stopping corruption. 

In fact, this poll finds that, when asked about which issues they wanted to hear more or less about, nearly two-thirds of voters (65%) said they wanted to hear LESS about trans athletes and surgeries, demonstrating the fatigue voters feel after being bombarded with hundreds of millions of dollars of anti-trans attacks multiple cycles in a row. 

Most striking, a 58 percent majority of voters agree that, “Republicans’ obsession with transgender people and children is strange and over the top.” This majority is higher than the number of voters who supported Democrats this cycle (55%), including a huge majority of folks who swung to Democrats: 

• 64% agree among Hispanic voters;
• 61% among younger men;
• 62% among Independents.

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