Republican ads suggesting Vice President Kamala Harris cared more about promoting transgender rights than boosting the economy likely contributed to Donald Trump’s victory, according to a new survey conducted after Tuesday’s election.
Another poll released this week by a different Democratic firm found, however, that hardly any voters were motivated by opposition to transgender surgeries or what Republicans derisively call “boys in girls sports.”
The conflicting surveys, with clashing but not totally contradictory findings, illustrate the tricky post-election analysis Democrats will need to conduct as they chart a course out of the political wilderness.
On Friday, the Democratic polling firm Blueprint survey released findings that suggest anti-trans ads hurt Harris. Blueprint asked voters to rank 25 statements about why they picked Trump instead of Harris. The two most popular reasons were that inflation was too high under the Biden administration and that too many immigrants illegally crossed the border.
The third-most popular statement was that “Kamala Harris is focused more on cultural issues like transgender issues rather than helping the middle class.” Among swing voters who broke for Trump, the “transgender issues” criticism was the most popular reason, Blueprint found.
“It was a symbol, a very effective symbol. It brings to life how voters feel that on lots of cultural and social issues, elected Democrats are so unfamiliar to them,” Alyssa Cass, a partner at Slingshot Strategies, which runs Blueprint, told HuffPost on Thursday. “So I think it was very effective in reminding voters that the Democratic Party has moved to a place that you can’t recognize in yourself and your friends and your family.”
Exit polls from Tuesday suggest inflation was a major drag for Harris, but otherwise the data doesn’t present a perfectly clear picture of what else pushed so many voters in Trump’s direction. The exit polls from Fox News and the Associated Press, for instance, found voters basically split on banning gender-affirming care for children: 47% supported the idea but 52% opposed it.
A more vaguely-worded question found 54% of voters thought “support for transgender rights in government and society” had gone too far, while 22% thought it was just right and 22% said it had not gone far enough.
In a Wednesday memo, the Democratic firm GQR cautioned against scapegoating trans issues for the election outcome, citing polling from the week leading up the election, which found nearly two-thirds of voters saw Trump’s trans ads.
“And yet, when asked their most important issues in this election, just 4 percent — dead last on this list — identify opposing transgender surgeries and transgender kids in sports as something that drove their vote,” the firm said in its analysis.
Kelley Robinson, president of the Human Rights Campaign, an LGBTQ+ civil rights group, said the GQR poll “confirms that once again, anti-trans attacks were not a motivating issue for voters – all they do is sow hate and division toward a community that just wants to be their authentic selves.”
Nonetheless, moderate Democratic lawmakers have already pointed to trans issue as a reason Harris lost.
“I have two little girls, I don’t want them getting run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete, but as a Democrat I’m supposed to be afraid to say that,” Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.) told The New York Times following the election — prompting a rebuke from one of his campaign aides, who resigned in protest.
Rep. Tom Suozzi, a moderate Long Island Democrat who flipped a GOP seat in a February special election, made a similar comment.
And Gilberto Hinojosa, chair of the Texas Democratic Party, told KUT, a local Austin, Texas, outlet on Wednesday that Democrats might consider disavowing the use of taxpayer dollars for transition care. His comments prompted immediate criticism from LGBTQ+ groups in Texas, leading him first to apologize and then, on Friday, to resign, though he claimed he was simply making room for a new generation.
But other Democrats said they didn’t believe Trump’s ads attacking Harris over transgender rights were as effective as his broader message on the economy and immigration.
“People vote on visceral reaction how they feel about the campaign,” said Steve Fulop, the Democratic mayor of Jersey City in New Jersey, a state that saw unexpected Republican gains. “A lot of other things are noise. In polling, on economy and immigration [Trump] was trusted more. I don’t necessarily think the trans ads drove the campaign.”
There’s no question Trump made opposition to trans rights a major part of his bid for the White House. The Trump campaign spent millions on ads about Harris’ past support for transgender rights, including a spot that quoted comments by co-hosts of the popular radio show “The Breakfast Club,” Charlamagne tha God and DJ Envy, expressing disbelief about Harris’ support for transition-related health care for incarcerated people. The ad also features footage of Harris praising the availability of the services at a forum on trans rights.
“Kamala is for they/them,” the spot concludes, showing a photo of Harris alongside Assistant Health and Human Services Secretary Rachel Levine, a transgender woman, and Sam Brinton, a nonbinary former Biden administration official. “President Trump is for you.”
Harris also faced scrutiny for stating in a 2019 ACLU questionnaire that she supported providing gender-affirming care for undocumented immigrants held in U.S. detention facilities.
Pressed by Fox News’ Brett Baier to answer to Trump’s attacks and clarify how she would handle trans issues as president, Harris noted that federal prisoners also were legally entitled to necessary health care under Trump. “I will follow the law, and it’s a law that Donald Trump actually followed,” she said.
Harris later offered a stronger defense of trans rights in an interview with NBC News, arguing that prescribing transition care is a “decision that doctors will make in terms of what is medically necessary.”
“I’m not going to put myself in a position of a doctor,” she added.
The Harris campaign didn’t put out an ad disputing Trump’s characterization of her position. Two Democratic Senate candidates who faced anti-trans attacks on the campaign trail, Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and Rep. Colin Allred (D-Texas), released ads in which they walked back their support for trans athletes. But neither man won his race.
Two other candidates who did not rebut the anti-trans ads they faced — Sen. Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin and Rep. Elissa Slotkin of Michigan — ran ahead of Harris and won their swing state Senate races.