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RaveNew YouGov Polling is Pretty Damning, the Shifts are BIG.
Heya, so a while ago I did a long post on how opinion polling has been shifting in the last few years away from the TRA position. This is a bit of an update to that.
I don't think there's been any media reporting on this poll. Which makes sense because, not to get too conspiratorial, but polls which paint an anti-TRA trend or picture tend not to get as much coverage. Well, not today!
I was perusing the US YouGov (specifically, here) and came across polls from December and January 2024. This is exactly the type of polling I love - time series data asking the same question from the same company. What's even better they ask policy questions in alternating ways that are leading for both one side and the other.
Anyway, you can all compare the figures yourselves but, to save you some effort, here are the net support (support - oppose) figures:
Net support amongst democrats for anti-TRA positions increased for puberty blockers and HRT for minors (5% and 8% respectively), but held steady or decreased for other issues. More interestingly, support amongst adults aged 18-29 has for anti-TRA positions as increased even more dramatically than amongst the general public on some issues, specifically bathrooms and HRT for minors (19%) and (17%). Beyond that, a lot more 18-29s describe themselves as 'Not Sure' across most questions.
The polls also show an increase of 4% of people who say they don't know any trans people, It's a bit hard to know what to make of that, but the number of 18-29s who say that they, a family member or a close friend are trans dropped from 21% to 13%, which is supppper dramatic. Of course, TRAs would say that's people being driven into the closet (although, I think this is an anonymised survey), my explanation is just that the fad is dying. It also aligns with fewer college students describing themselves as trans or non-binary according to other data I've seen.
The disclaimer to all this is that making too much out of one poll is a bit dangerous. The sample size isn't terrible (1,155 and 2,000 for January and December respectively), but especially for crosstab stuff we're looking at small numbers. Still, it chimes with prior trends and general 'vibes'. I will keep a look out for other time series sources (Gallup polls on this every May I think)