Reality Check: Leading up to Election Night, Equality is Surging while Anti-Trans Attacks Fall Flat

WASHINGTON - With just five days until voting ends, equality remains a winning issue, openly-LGBTQ+ candidates are poised to make history once again, and brazen, cruel attacks against the transgender community are turning off voters. As Vice President Kamala Harris put it during her closing argument this week, "[Trump] is not a candidate for president who is thinking about how to make your life better. Donald Trump has spent a decade trying to keep the American people divided and afraid of each other. That is who he is, but America…that is not who we are." Below are some of the key trends emerging.

Openly-LGBTQ+ Candidates Are Poised to Make History

In crucial races across the country, openly-LGBTQ+ candidates are on the precipice of making their mark on the history books. If elected,

• Delaware State Senator Sarah McBride would be the nation's first openly-transgender member of Congress

• Texas State Representative Julie Johnson would be the first openly-LGBTQ+ member of Congress from The South

• Washington State Senator Emily Randall would be the first Latina lesbian elected to Congress

• California State Representative Evan Low would be the first LGBTQ+ person of color elected to Congress from Northern California

• Pennsylvania State Representative Malcolm Kenyatta would be the first openly-LGBTQ+ person elected statewide in the Commonwealth

• Wisconsin Senator Tammy Baldwin, whose contributions as the nation's first openly-LGBTQ+ Senator have helped drive LGBTQ+ equality for years, could help determine the balance of power in that chamber

Other openly-LGBTQ+ candidates, like California's Will Rollins and Former New York Congressman Mondaire Jones, are crucial to determining the majority in the US House of Representatives.

Equality Voters Are Showing Up

Throughout the election cycle, HRC and its political arms have made good on its goal of showing up - and making a substantial investment in driving 75 million Equality Voters to the polls. To date, the organization has:

• Endorsed nearly 600 pro-equality candidates nationwide

• Recruited nearly 20,000 phone bank, text bank, and door canvass volunteer shifts

• Raised nearly $900,000 for endorsed candidates

• Delivered over 26 million emails and 7.8 million broadcast text messages sent to members and supporters about the election and local races

And now, those voters are showing up. As of Wednesday afternoon, more than 17 million Equality Voters had cast their ballots.

Voters Again Rejecting Anti-Trans Attacks

MAGA last-gasp attempts to use the transgender community to sow division, chaos, and hate are not new. Similar attacks have been tried - and failed - in the past several election cycles. Recent data shows that trend looks to be emerging once again.

• An October survey by Data for Progress found these ads to be backfiring, underscoring the deep unpopularity and ineffectiveness of anti-trans attack ads:

  • The use of political attack ads against transgender people was described as "sad and shameful" by the majority of Democrats (61%) and Independents (58%), and even by a plurality of Republicans (41%). The majority of voters also said that they feel that these ads are "mean-spirited" and "out of hand."

  • 85% of Republicans said candidates should back away from transgender messaging, more than the share of Democratic (75%) and independent (82%) voters who said the same

  • By a more than 20 point margin (52% to 31%), voters would back a candidate who supports transgender rights versus a candidate who opposes transgender rights; by similar margins (52% to 29%), voters trust the Democratic Party over the Republican Party to handle transgender issues

  • 58% of respondents believe the government should be "less involved in regulating what transgender people are allowed to do, including health care they can receive"-- including 61% of Independents and a plurality (45%) of Republicans

  • 55% of respondents there is too much legislation targeting transgender people, and view them as "political theater"

• September Gallup Poll data showed that transgender issues are not a key motivator for the general electorate. Respondents were asked to gauge the importance of 22 issue areas in determining their vote. "Transgender rights" ranked last among the issues, with just 18% of those polled saying that transgender rights were "extremely important" to them when deciding who to vote for.

  • What's more, of those who identified transgender rights as "extremely important," a majority were Democrats, a likely signal that those motivated to vote based on transgender rights are primarily those concerned with recent MAGA attacks on those rights. In the data, twice as many Democratic voters said transgender issues were important to their vote as Republicans.

• In a recent NYT/Siena poll of battleground states, voters in Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin expressed broad support for transgender Americans. A majority also expressed support for pro-equality Senate candidates in those states. When asked, 56% of voters agreed with the statement, "Society should accept transgender people as having the gender they identify with," while only 34% agreed with the statement, "Society should NOT accept transgender people as having the gender they identify with." As journalist Erin Reed notes, support for transgender acceptance was even higher when the results were isolated to women (64% to 28%) and Independents (58% to 28%).

• Similarly, a study by Ground Media found that a recent Trump anti-trans advertisement yielded "no statistically significant shift" in voter choice, mobilization or likelihood to vote.

Still, Trump is Already Threatening to Reject the Will of the Voters

Despite the clear unpopularity of his chaos and division, Donald Trump has already begun peddling dangerous lies about the election, sowing distrust in results and seeding the ground for him to again refuse to accept an election outcome he does not like.

• For months, Donald Trump has been signaling that he will refuse to accept the results of the election, including in a May interview with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, where he repeated debunked lies about the 2020 election.

• In the June debate with President Biden, Donald Trump dodged multiple questions about whether he would accept the election's outcome. When pressed a third time, he repeated previous election denial rhetoric about "fair and legal" elections.

• Trump's running mate, Ohio Senator JD Vance, has parroted the lies, falsely claiming that Donald Trump did not lose the 2020 election.

• And as Election Day nears, Donald Trump is escalating his dangerous lies. He has repeatedly, falsely accused Democrats of "cheating," even threatening to prosecute and jail those he deems as responsible for the election's outcome.

• NBC reports that several Trump allies anticipate that the former President will prematurely declare himself the winner of this election, sowing doubt in our electoral system and setting the stage to challenge the outcome.

Donald Trump's refusal to accept defeat in 2020 bred chaos across the country, led to his being indicted on numerous criminal charges, and resulted in a violent mob storming the United States Capitol in an effort to overturn the election results and block the certification of the Electoral Votes.

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The Human Rights Campaign is America's largest civil rights organization working to achieve equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people. HRC envisions a world where LGBTQ+ people are embraced as full members of society at home, at work and in every community.

Human Rights Campaign PAC and Human Rights Campaign Equality Votes PAC are federal political committees that engage nationally to support pro-equality candidates.

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