Faith Voters, Men, Women And The Gender Identity Debate

(ANALYSIS) In the 2024 presidential election campaign there were hundreds of millions of dollars spent on advertising to convince voters to back either Donald Trump or Kamala Harris. But there was one spot that ran on television in a seeming loop.

It was paid for by the Trump campaign and it focused on the issue of gender identity. It featured the following comment from Harris during a town hall in 2019, “Every transgender inmate in the prison system would have access (to gender affirming care).” It’s important to note that Harris did not campaign on the issue at all in 2024, but Trump seized on those previous remarks to try and paint the Democratic party as out of step with mainstream America on what has become a key Culture War issue.

The tagline for that advertisement was simple, “Kamala Harris is for they/them. President Trump is for you.” While it’s impossible to know if any specific campaign message was effective in winning over voters, this ad was discussed at length in major media outlets. In The Washington Post, Megan McArdle wrote an op-ed with the headline, “Trump’s ads on trans issues are effective. Harris has herself to blame.” Former Republican governor of New Jersey, Chris Christie called it the most effective ad of the 2024 presidential election cycle.

But how do voters feel generally about the issue of gender identity?

It’s something that polling has only really started asking about in the last couple of years. The Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) polled over 5,400 Americans about a variety of topics related to gender identity back in March of 2023 and the results offer a lot of nuance related to how the public is thinking through issues related to gender.

One of the first questions on the survey is a simple one, “When it comes to gender, do you…” then they are given four response options:

1. Feel strongly that there are only two genders, man or woman

2. Think there are only two genders, but do not feel strongly about it

3. Think there is a range of many gender identities, but do not feel strongly about it

4. Feel strongly that there is a range of many possible gender identities

This is the distribution of these responses across the sample.