LGBTQ voting bloc set to make up almost 1 in 5 voters by 2040, Human Rights Campaign says

Brooke Migdon
·4 min read
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Story at a glance

  • LGBTQ adults are expected to account for nearly 18 percent of the nation’s voting eligible population by 2040, according to a new report from the Human Rights Campaign and Bowling Green State University.

  • In several key red states including Georgia, Texas and Arizona, the proportion of LGBTQ voters is expected to nearly double between 2020 and 2040, surpassing national levels.

  • In Nevada and Colorado, the proportion of the voting eligible population identifying as LGBTQ will exceed 20 percent by 2040, according to the report.

The LGBTQ voting bloc is poised for considerable growth over the next two decades, wielding considerable influence in determining what the future will look like for the nation’s political landscape.

In a report published Thursday by the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), a national LGBTQ advocacy group, and Bowling Green State University in Ohio, it’s estimated that LGBTQ adults — already accounting for a sizable proportion of the electorate, at 11.3 percent — will make up 14 percent of eligible voters by 2030.

By 2040, nearly 18 percent of eligible voters in the U.S. will identify as LGBTQ, according to the report, which uses publicly available Census Bureau data and demographic projections from the University of Virginia.

HRC Interim President Joni Madison on Thursday said the role LGBTQ voters already play in elections will grow in the coming years to “fundamentally reshape the American electoral landscape,” particularly in battleground states and swing districts.

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In several consequential red states including Georgia, Texas and Arizona, the proportion of LGBTQ voters is expected to nearly double between 2020 and 2040, surpassing national levels.

That’s likely to tip the scales toward Democrats in those states, turning once reliably Republican strongholds into more evenly divided battlegrounds. A 2020 Williams Institute report found that half of LGBTQ adults in the U.S. are registered Democrats (another 15 percent are Republicans, 22 percent are Independents and 13 percent identify with another party or are unsure with which party they most identify).

In states including Nevada and Colorado, the proportion of the voting eligible population identifying as LGBTQ will exceed an estimated 20 percent by 2040, according to Thursday’s report.

Nationally, the share of eligible voters that identify as LGBTQ is already up from 2020, when 10.8 percent of the adult population said they were LGBTQ. That’s in no small part tied to the coming of age of young adults in Gen Z, with 27 percent of that generation (born between 1997 and 2003) identifying as LGBTQ, according to Thursday’s report.

A February Gallup poll similarly found that more than 20 percent of Gen Z adults identify as either gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender, nearly doubling since 2017, when only the leading edge of that generation (born between 1997 and 1999) had reached adulthood.

Thursday’s HRC report comes on the heels of a record-breaking year for state bills aiming to restrict the rights of LGBTQ people, particularly transgender youth. The state legislatures of no less than 40 states this year considered measures to curtail access to gender-affirming health care, bar transgender athletes from competing on sports teams consistent with their gender identity and restrict how LGBTQ issues and identities are talked about at school or the workplace, according to Freedom for All Americans, which tracks state-level legislation affecting the LGBTQ community.

More than 50 percent of registered LGBTQ voters planning to vote in the midterms in a February GLAAD poll said they are “extremely motivated” to vote this November, recognizing that these elections are underscored by an increasingly hostile climate toward LGBTQ people in state legislatures nationwide.

While the fight over LGBTQ rights this year has primarily been fought at the state level, federal lawmakers have begun to wade into the issue.

In August, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) introduced the first piece of federal legislation to outlaw gender-affirming care for minors nationwide, seeking to make it a felony — punishable by up to 25 years in prison — to provide gender-affirming care to youth under 18.

Greene’s bill is co-sponsored by more than 40 House Republicans and Republican Senate candidates J.D. Vance of Ohio and Blake Masters of Arizona have pledged to back the measure if they are elected in November.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) has promised to bring up a bill to prevent transgender athletes from competing in women’s sports if Republicans win the House majority.

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