The trans rights backlash is real

The Democratic Party is bouncing back. The trans rights movement is not.

In 2016, opposition to North Carolina’s “bathroom bill” was a major animating force in defeating Republican Gov. Pat McCrory. Things might play out differently today, when support for trans rights has significantly retreated. (Photo By Al Drago/CQ Roll Call)

Welcome back to The Argument’s poll series, where we survey Americans on the issues everyone’s fighting about. Our full crosstabs are available below the paywall at the end of this post. Our last surveys have asked about immigration, education and parenting, the lingering politics of COVID-19, immigration, AI, and free speech. The Argument’s full methodology can be read here.

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In 2016, North Carolina’s Republican Gov. Pat McCrory threw his political weight behind HB-2, a measure commonly known as the “bathroom bill.” The law, which required transgender people to use public restrooms corresponding with their biological sex, prompted an immense public outcry that resulted in business boycotts, widespread public condemnation — including from Donald Trump himself — and eventually, the end of McCrory’s governorship.

Today, the landscape around the issue could not be more different, as shown by The Argument’s latest national survey of registered voters. In fact, 52% of voters now support legislation requiring trans people to use bathrooms corresponding with their biological sex, while just 33% oppose such a bill.

This is a sharp and dramatic change from the way things stood at the beginning of the Trump era, when Americans consistently rejected the concept of bathroom restrictions for trans people. In a Pew Research Center poll from September 2016, 51% of Americans said that trans people should be allowed to use public restrooms of the gender they identify as. Months later, the Public Religion Research Institute released a similar finding showing 53% of Americans were opposed to laws that would require trans people to use bathrooms corresponding to their birth sex.¹

Today, this type of support seems like a distant memory.

The reversal of sentiment on the bathroom bill is just one example of the backsliding that the progressive movement’s stances on trans rights have suffered in the court of public opinion over the last few years. In nearly all of the questions and measures we tested, voters — including a significant chunk of Democrats — aligned with the conservative viewpoint.

And yet, even as voters may disagree with progressive views on LGBT issues, they don’t seem to be deciding their votes based on these issues. In this month’s survey, Democrats actually led on the generic ballot by six percentage points. That marked the widest lead ever recorded among registered voters in our polling this cycle.

We’ve seen this before. In the New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial races, Republicans tried to run the gender identity playbook to maximum effect, only to suffer two landslide losses against Mikie Sherrill and Abigail Spanberger.

Coupled with Trump’s abysmal approval ratings — he sits at -15 in our latest poll — and our finding that other issues like cost of living and health care are top of mind for voters, it’s possible this issue will have little bearing on the coming elections.

But that doesn’t change the fact that voters simply don’t agree with the progressive viewpoint on trans rights any longer. And while it’s tempting for proponents to give in to nihilism and say that American voters have always been a transphobic group, the data consistently shows that it wasn’t always like this.

The turn against trans rights

It is hard to overstate how hostile the American public has become to many of the progressive movement’s goals on trans issues.

For instance, with the trans sports debate, over 60% of voters said they now support legislation requiring athletes in K-12 sports to compete with their biological sex, rather than with the gender they identify with. Critically, there was no large constituency of voters in favor of the progressive viewpoint, which garnered just 25% support among the electorate; even Democrats were evenly split on the measure. (As an example of how unfavorable the issue landscape is here, Harris 2024 voters who are parents actually aligned with the conservative viewpoint by a surprisingly wide 45% to 34%.)

Just as with the bathroom bill, public sentiment wasn’t always like this. In 2018, Americans had significantly more progressive views on trans athletes. The Public Religion Research Institute found that 50% believed that trans women should be able to compete with other women in high school sports, while 43% believed that they should compete with the men.

In other words, the backsliding is real and serious. This is perhaps the most unfavorable that the public has been toward trans rights in quite some time. Republicans have successfully and effectively exploited several flashpoint issues, like sports, in order to shift public opinion in their direction, while progressives have been unable to effectively muster persuasive arguments.

Some of this may be down to an unwillingness to even entertain a debate, in an unsuccessful effort to maintain a unified front. Progressive activists and organizations have often been confrontational when challenged with dissenting views, leading critics to claim that these tactics left little room for actual debate. The net result, however, is the worst-case scenario for progressives and trans individuals alike, as a previously sympathetic public’s support of trans rights has completely unraveled over the last decade.

The numbers were similarly grim for most other topics in this thread. Just 27% of voters said they support gender reassignment surgeries being available for minors, even when the procedure is supported by the parents and deemed medically necessary by doctors. Meanwhile, 62% disagreed. Almost every single group of voters — men, women, white, nonwhite, college-educated, and non-college-educated alike — was aligned with the conservative viewpoint on this.

Similarly, opposition to providing minors with access to puberty blockers and hormone replacement therapy remained widespread, even if deemed medically necessary by doctors and with parental consent. Once again, it’s worth noting that Americans used to be more progressive on these issues. Even as late as 2024, Gallup found a majority of voters more aligned with the progressive viewpoint on this. The backsliding on this is sharp and recent.

The Argument’s polling isn’t an outlier. An aggregation of polling done by 538 last year showed that the most popular part of Trump’s agenda was the portion concerning LGBT issues. These findings were reinforced by an AP-NORC survey from May 2025, finding that support for Trump’s actions on trans issues far exceeded the support for his agenda in other areas.

In other words, even as the public has done a 180 on Trump’s other pet issues, like immigration, that shift hasn’t translated cleanly across all areas. Thus far, there hasn’t been another “vibe shift” on matters of gender identity, and the progressive viewpoint on trans issues hasn’t rebounded back to popularity.

The backsliding is real, and it hasn’t reversed itself automatically, despite Trump’s overall unpopularity. A large chunk of voters (including a lot of nonwhite Democrats) are aligned with conservative stances on the issues at play.

One bright spot for progressives? This backlash doesn’t appear to have tarnished some of their more notable civil rights victories. Support for gay marriage remains broad and steady, and it continues to sit at near-supermajority levels of popularity. In fact, 65% of voters said they believe same-sex marriages should receive the same rights and protections as traditional marriages, while just 27% disagreed.

That’s partly why Democrats only have a slight public trust disadvantage on the whole for LGBT issues. In our survey, 38% of registered voters said they align more with Democrats, while 39% aligned more with Republicans.

Given that the midterms tend to be referendums on the party in power, it’s fair to say that Democrats are still well-positioned to make serious gains. Even if the Democratic Party continues to be associated with progressive views on trans policy, it will likely win handily in the upcoming elections. It may even win in 2028 without changing anything, depending on the economy.

But that is very different from whether the public agrees with progressives on the topic, and it is clear that the opinion landscape on trans issues has become sharply unfavorable to the progressive viewpoints. Persuasion is possible, but if they want to convince the country, Democrats should probably start with their own base.

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Methodology

Our poll was fielded between Feb. 4 and 10, 2026, and surveyed 3,003 registered voters across the nation. The sample was weighted to be representative of the universe of registered voters in the United States by race; age; gender; education; census region; race by gender; age by gender; race by education; modeled presidential partisanship by age, education and gender; and 2024 vote choice. The margin of sampling error was plus or minus 1.8 percentage points. The design effect of the survey, which measures the loss of statistical precision due to weighting and design, was 1.22. Accounting for the design effect, the full margin of error was plus or minus 2.0 percentage points.

This survey was designed and weighted by The Argument. Data collection was performed by Verasight, and voter file data and weighting targets were obtained from Catalist. A full methodology statement is available on the last page of the survey PDF. A detailed explanation on how our surveys work is available here.

Thanks to Josh Kalla, Amanda Iovino, Guy Molyneaux, Charlotte Swasey, and Carroll Doherty for reviewing this month’s polling language. As part of The Argument’s polling advisory committee, these experts have provided comments to ensure the rigor and objectivity of this polling project. They are not responsible for the ultimate language choices made by The Argument, and all errors are our own.

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