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LGBTQ+ voters overwhelmingly preferred Vice President Kamala Harris to Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election, according to multiple exit polls, in a race that saw other key demographics shift Republican.
NBC News’ exit poll found this week that 86% of LGBTQ+ voters cast their ballots for Harris this year, with 12% saying they voted for Trump. That ratio climbed even higher among queer and trans voters of color, 91% of whom chose Harris against just 5% for Trump; among white LGBTQ+ respondents, 16% broke for Trump, according to NBC’s analysis. Proportionally, LGBTQ+ people were some of the most likely to vote for Harris of any demographic measured by the NBC poll, second only to Black women.
Exit polls from CNN found similar numbers among LGBTQ+ voters this week, though the network reported that a marginally higher overall percentage — 13% — voted for Trump. (CNN and NBC have reported similar results among LGBTQ+ respondents in both networks’ 2016 and 2020 exit polling as well.) The biggest discrepancy came from a Fox News exit poll which showed a 78% share for Harris versus an even 20% for Trump among LGBTQ+ voters.
LGBTQ+ support for the Harris/Walz ticket was proportionally higher than for any Democratic candidate for president in the past five election cycles, per NBC. It’s a striking difference especially compared to the 2020 election, when President Joe Biden took home more total votes than any candidate in history, yet according to exit polls, only 64% of the LGBTQ+ vote — whether that was due to pro-Trump messaging by Log Cabin Republicans, or Biden’s own perceived lack of leadership on LGBTQ+ issues during his campaign. (Although 2020 exit polling initially showed that around 27% of LGBTQ+ voters chose Trump, a GLAAD survey later that month indicated the actual number may have been much lower, closer to 14%.)
It’s no surprise that so few LGBTQ+ voters boarded the Trump train this year, and not just because of the laundry list of harms committed during his first term. The 2024 Trump campaign was characterized in large part by intense xenophobia and relentless scapegoating of transgender people — two threads Trump wove together in his debate against Harris, when he claimed she endorsed “transgender operations on illegal aliens that are in prison.” The Trump team quickly spun that combined line of attack into the “Kamala Is for They/Them” ad campaign, part of a nine-figure advertising blitz by Republicans targeting trans healthcare and youth sports. Although Trump’s running mate J.D. Vance claimed prior to the election that his ticket would seize the “normal gay guy vote,” no such mandate appeared.
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Still, Republicans made major gains with young voters (especially first-time voters) and Latinx communities, the latter of whom shifted towards Trump by more than 13 points, per a New York Times analysis Wednesday. That doesn’t necessarily mean the U.S. is getting more conservative, but could indicate general backlash toward the Biden administration in particular, or to Harris as a candidate. As some analysts have already argued, the Harris campaign’s choice to chase moderate Republican voters by moving right on immigration — while seeming to abdicate on trans issues — may have backfired by discouraging Democrats and independents (who outnumbered Democrats for the first time in at least two decades). Harris also hemorrhaged goodwill — especially, but not exclusively, among Arab Americans and Muslims — due to her support for Israel’s continued siege of Palestine, over which she and Biden faced frequent protests and condemnation from LGBTQ+ activist groups and celebrities.
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