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DiscussionA review of recent polling data from multiple sources (US and UK)
Hello! A pet project of mine for a while how has trying to compile and record polling data about trans-related topics as it comes out, from multiple sources across the US and UK. These sources aren't cherry picked - if a poll is on the topic of general public opinion on a trans-related topic, I've included it. If you're not interested in the specifics, I have a review section at the bottom.
The emotive reason for this is to know whether the opinions I and others on here hold are actually 'extreme', based on objective measures (spoiler: they aren't). The more empirical reason is that I've wanted to figure out whether trans is on the same societal trajectory as gay acceptance in the 1990s and 2000s (i.e. after the onset of HIV/AIDS, which caused a dip in the 80s), as I think is the narrative of TRAs. Additionally, politicians want to appeal to the median swing-voter, so what the median-voter believes matters
The polling I've been most interested in is:
The Polling
British Social Attitudes survey (UK)
link - Page 36
The BSA is a respected UK non-profit that has been running a survey since 1983. The first mention of trans in the summary reports was in 2017 (BSA 34).
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On the number of people who self-describe as 'prejudiced towards trans people', those who self describe as 'very' or 'a little' have risen from 17% in 2016 to 33% in 2022.
leading: Extremally. You'll probably find some people who'd say they weren't prejudiced against Nazis, just because the term 'prejudiced' is so loaded.
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On the number of people who think a trans person should be able to have the sex on their birth certificate changed, that's gone down from 58% in 2016 to 30% in 2022.
leading: None
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YouGov (UK)
YouGov released a review article in July 2022. I really wish they'd done more since and I had more up to date data, but oh well. It's a bit of a mega-article, in terms of questions covered, so I'll only cover time-series changes between 2018-2022 (but do check out the article if you're interested!)
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(The following are NET scores i.e. % agree minus % disagree. 0 would be a perfectly split populace, excluding the 'Don't Knows')
leading: In general, these seem fine to me. One can quibble over the space between trans and man/women, but that'd be partisan either way.
IPSOS (International) link
This is an international survey conducted in June 2023. As a general point, I am pretty sceptical on the results, because it's hard to put them in the context of of the countries involved. For example, translation issues and public visibility. It would have been more interesting to see questions that addressed what transgender meant e.g. 'do you think somebody can change from being a man to a woman over their lifetime, or vice versa'.
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Britain and the US have significantly lower acceptance of 'gender affirming care' for teenagers (e.g. counselling and HRT) than South Korea, Japan. (47% and 45% vs. 61% and 65%).
leading: Moderate, While the results are possible, but I think it's also possible gender-related medical intervention on minors doesn't take place in those countries, and so is argued about less, leading fewer people to really understand the implications of the question e.g. that HRT has irreversible effects. Also sneaky of them to lump in counselling with HRT.
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40% in both the US and UK support trans people using the single-sex facilities (e.g. toilets) they identify with, which is lowest in the group.
leading: Low, Wording is sorta okay, although 'toilets' tend to be least controversial type of single-sex facility, compared to changing rooms and prisons.
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37% and 36% in the US and UK think that Health Insurance systems should cover the costs of gender transition no differently than the costs of other medical procedures.
leading: None aside from the general point about understanding, also I imagine a lot of the variation here comes down to domestic attitudes towards health care in each country.
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Pew Research Center (US)
So the best Pew data on this I've found was released on 6th June 2024, titled 'Cultural Issues and the 2024 Election'
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On whether 'a person who is a man or a women can be different from sex assigned at birth' , the proportion who think it can has fallen from 45% in September 2017 to 34% in April 2024. Notably, while it's a highly partisan issue, there has been an 9% decrease amongst Democrats as well.
leading: Low, the term 'assigned' as problems, unless you're talking about people with some DSDs, it's sex is observed not assigned, but otherwise okay.
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Another finding on the same page is that only 43% are comfortable using they/them pronouns.
leading: Low, you could argue that 'comfortable' sorta presupposes that somebody ought to be accepting. But it's debatable.
NPR_PBS-NewsHour_Marist-Poll (US)
The proportion of people who support bills that 'criminalise gender-transition-related medical care for minors' increased from 28% in April 2021 to 43% in March 2023.
leading: Moderate: If a poll described lobotomies as 'medical care for the mentally ill', they'd probably see an uptick in support. Medical care and criminalises are loaded phrasing.
Interestingly, the April 2021 poll reporting included that 67% opposed state laws banning trans students from competing in 'sports teams that match their gender identity' (if you say 'on the sports team of their sex', its lower, see below), but there was no reporting on how people answered that question in March 2023. I'd wager either they didn't ask the question again on purpose, or they did are chose not to report on the result...
Sienna College Poll
A poll in April 2024 asked whether people supported laws 'requiring that high school athletes only compete with others of the same sex that they were assigned at birth' 66% supported, 27% opposed. Even a majority of Democrats (52%) supported.
leading: Again, 'sex assigned at birth' is a bit misleading. Still better than 'gender' I guess.
Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) (US)
So unfortunately, these guys asked about 'LGBTQ' people as a whole. Which is unhelpful. As this site demonstrates, plenty of people have very different views on the 'LGB' vs the 'TQ'. That said, here's what it said anyway
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The proportion of people who support policies that protect 'LGBTQ' people from housing, employment and public accommodation discrimination fell from 80% in 2022 to 76% in 2023 , amongst 18-29 year olds, it went from 83% in 2020 to 75% in 2023.
leading: It's not leading exactly, but I also don't see the relevance. Few people would support general discrimination about trans people in housing and employment. This would only come up in the context on women's shelters and prisoners, which is a specific case deserving a specific question (would also poll very differently I imagine...)
A report based on polling from June 2024, found that 59% of Americans favour driver's licences displaying sex at birth rather than gender.
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Same poll found that 47% favour laws that 'prevent parents from allowing their child to receive medical care for their gender transition'
leading: High. First, the question implicitly invokes the parental rights argument, rather than just asking whether it should be illegal in general. Second is the medical care phrasing.
Sex Matters poll (UK)
Okay, so much as I love Helen Joyce and Maya Forstater, Sex Matters is a partisan organisation so I would take this with caution. That being said, they commissioned a poll conducted in June 2024, I can't find anything on the biases on the company (People Polling).
57% support the UK's Equality Sex as being amended to clarify 'male' and 'female' mean biological sex, so as to protect single sex services and spaces, vs. 10% oppose
leading: Moderate. In the GC direction. The argument is being made in the wording, especially the last clause and the word 'protect'. A TRA would say something like 'so as to legalise the exclusion of trans people'. Not sure what a better way to word that question could be though.
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20% support changing the law to make it easier for people to change the sex on their birth certificate vs. 43% oppose.
leading: None
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29% support amending the law to officially recognise people who do not feel male or female as 'non-binary'. vs. 44% oppose.
leading: Moderate: putting non-binary in quotes and saying 'feel' as opposed to 'identify as' is loaded.
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Review
All in all, across the board in both the US and the UK, polling on trans issues is showing consistent, and generally bipartisan, declines in support for pro-trans positions. From a polling side, the types of questions differ somewhat between the UK and the US, with British questions focusing a lot more on legal status, while US ones focus more on medical transition for minors, although there's overlap.
Notably, these declines are big -5 to -10 points might not seem like a lot, but that's actually a pretty rapid social shift to occur in ~5 years. The BSA report does compare this to attitudes towards gay people in the 80s, but I don't think that's a valid comparison. HIV/AIDs was a relatively sudden global health event, which terrified a lot of people and was acutely stigmatising. There isn't an equivalent single event like that for trans people, just drips and drabs of news coverage across a range of issues, from sports to child medical transition to women's prisons. I would argue people are genuinely thinking about gender ideology and coming to a critical view, although obviously partisan tribalism plays a part too, especially in the US. Overall, I'd be surprised if in say, 2050, everyone is all-aboard HRT for pre-teens and 'woodland nymph' as a legal gender.
In the UK, the shift in positioning of the Labour Party (and doubling down of the Conservatives) is almost certainly a result of party strategists looking at the polls above, and perhaps their own research, and realising it isn't a vote-winning topic. In the US, the Biden administration seems to have been remarkably resilient to this observation...and I've not got a firm read on the Harris campaign.
One consistent thing is TRA language from ostensibly neutral sources. Transition for minors is 'medical care' and sex is 'assigned'. And most egregiously, the BSA asks people to self-describe as 'prejudiced' (although, in their defence, they use this word when asking about other groups, and it may partially be a legacy thing to enable consistency and cross comparison). When polling questions are more precise and less loaded, support for the TRA position declines dramatically, and is almost always the minority view, by a wide margin. The commentary around most of the polls I've listed from the pollsters also tends to frame the findings in TRAish ways, with declines in trans support being implicitly a bad thing.
Remaining Questions
Future polling: More data is always good! I'm especially curious if we'll see more knock on effects from the Cass Review from 2024 onwards, especially in the UK and/or around minor transition.
Age-Specific opinion over time: Are young people becoming more or less pro-trans? If we're living through a fad, one would expect views of younger people to be shifting. The YouGov data is a mixed bag on this and only goes up to 2022. Relatedly, generational shifts overtime - will 30 year old gen z'ers have the same views then as they do now?
Other countries: I am reliably informed the US and the UK are not the whole world! I'd love to have more polling data from elsewhere. Also more general info on the legal and medical status quo outside Europe and North America. For example, which countries do actually prescribe puberty blockers to kids? How do rates of medical transition compare? TIM rates vs. TIF rates?
If anyone has more polls to link me to, let me know!
So I finally did it, I stopped admiring and actually wrote in. I didn’t use my real name but the one I publish under, and I plan to share this letter on my Substack at a later date.
I shouldn’t be blown away by a democrat who is actually speaking logic and sweet reason, but I would go three rounds with Imane Khelif for this guy. It takes so much conviction and courage to stand up to the mob, and it’s refreshing to see that from the side I really want to love but have struggled to, lately.
Even if you’re not a NH constituent, please consider sending him your support. I think it goes a long way when you’re fighting your own side in a lonely battle where those supporting you are largely silent.
Good letter, and thanks for the reminder! It’s something I wanted to do right away, but sometimes need another nudge.