Biden leads Trump among LGBTQ voters, but Trump enjoys support from 1 in 5 LGBTQ people
Biden polls better among LGBTQ Republicans than straight Republicans, but is underperforming Hillary Clinton among all LGBTQ voters
A new Morning Consult poll finds that former Vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic Party nominee in this November’s election, is leading President Donald Trump by an overwhelming margin of 45 points among LGBTQ voters.
According to the most recent poll, conducted from June 15-21, 64% of LGBTQ voters say they’re likely to support Biden in this year’s election, compared to 19% who say they’re likely to re-elect President Trump.
Among all voters, Biden leads Trump, 47% to 39%, with a 1% margin of error.
Morning Consult has been tracking Biden’s support among various constituencies since his Super Tuesday victories on Mar. 3, finding that Biden has led Trump by an average spread of 43 percentage points, with Biden generally earning the support of about 63% of LGBTQ voters, compared to Trump’s 20%. (Each survey has polled between 1400 and 2900 LGBTQ voters, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2 or 3 points.)
In those various polls, Biden has led Trump by an average of 86 points among LGBTQ Democrats (89% to 3%), 28 points among LGBTQ independents (47% to 19%), and earns an average of 12% among LGBTQ Republicans, compared to 7% among straight Republicans.
An estimated 12% of Democrats and 10% of independents identify as LGBTQ, exercising a significant amount of sway over the survey’s results. By comparison, only 4% of Republicans identify as LGBTQ, demonstrating their limited influence over the party.
But there is some good news for Trump in the poll: the president is performing almost identically to the level of support he enjoyed in polls taken in advance of the 2016 election, earning the support of about 1 in 5 LGBTQ voters. It’s also higher than the 14% of LGBTQ voters he ultimately ended up winning on Election Day, according to national exit polls.
Meanwhile, Biden’s lead — and even his over-performance with LGBTQ Republicans, still puts him at least nine points behind the level of support enjoyed by Hillary Clinton in pre-election polling, and 13 points behind Clinton’s Election Day share of the LGBTQ vote.
Some of that could be due to the fact that he was not the preferred choice of LGBTQ Democrats in the early days of the Democratic primary, lagging behind Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) by 16 points, and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) by a point, according to Morning Consult trackers.
While Trump campaigned as a “real friend” to the LGBTQ community in advance of the 2016 election, pledging to protect LGBTQ citizens from the threat of radical Islam following the Pulse nightclub massacre, and criticized Clinton for her foreign policy stances and the Clinton Foundation for accepting money from countries where homosexuality is criminalized, he has also been at odds with LGBTQ rights on the domestic front.
Even as he touts a global initiative, spearheaded by former U.S. Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell, to encourage other countries in Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean to repeal laws outlawing homosexuality, the president’s administration has sided against LGBTQ people in recent Supreme Court cases involving workplace discrimination, has pushed for rules to turn away transgender homeless individuals from single-sex shelters based on their biological sex at birth, and has attempted to repeal LGBTQ protections in health care from the Affordable Care Act (in addition to trying to repeal the Act altogether).
According to the Morning Consult poll, over half of all LGBTQ voters, or 53%, have favorable opinions of Biden, compared to 20% who have favorable opinions of Trump. Among LGBTQ Republicans, 23% have favorable views of Biden, and 65% have negative views, compared to a 12%-83% spread among heterosexual Republicans.
The poll finds LGBTQ Republicans are less ideologically homogeneous than their Democratic peers. Twenty-five percent of LGBTQ Republicans identify as “liberal,” five times the share of LGBTQ Democrats who identify as “conservative.”
Twenty percent of LGBTQ Republicans describe themselves as “moderate,” compared to 13% of LGBTQ Democrats. However, on other diversity metrics, LGBTQ Republicans are whiter, more affluent, and more likely to be men, than their Democratic peers.
Most LGBTQ voters are not motivated to vote by LGBTQ issues, although it may play a role in their vote. Compared to their straight counterparts, LGBTQ voters are less likely than their straight peers to list the economy (25%), national security (8%), or Medicare and Social Security (9%) as their primary concern.
But LGBTQ voters are more likely to prioritize health care, with 22% listing it as a top concern, compared to 18% of straight respondents, and issues affecting reproductive rights and equal pay, with 11% listing it as their chief priority, compared to 4% of straight voters.
Read more:
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