Does Hillary Clinton have the gay vote sewn up?
A surprising number of LGBT voters are backing Donald Trump in the upcoming election.
An NBC News poll indicates 20% of queer voters would pull the lever for the Republican nominee if the election were held today. Hillary Clinton has the support of 72% of those polled.
Trump has stated he would be better on gay issues than Clinton—and in his convention speech, he promised “I will do everything in my power to protect our LGBTQ citizens from the violence and oppression of a hateful foreign ideology.”
But the 2016 Republican platform has been condemned as the party’s most homophobic ever.
And many advocates are disturbed by Trump’s choice of Indiana Gov. Mike Pence—who backed his state’s “religious freedom” law—as running mate.
When outlier candidates Gary Johnson and Jill Stein were added to the mix, Johnson and Trump were nearly tied. (The former garnering 13% and the latter 15%.)
Green Party candidate Stein only received the support of 8% of those polled.
The poll, conducted between September 5 and 18, included 1,728 LGBT respondents—or about 7% of the total sample. Of those, 70% said they were registered Democrats, while 18% were registered Republicans and 13% were registered as Independents.
Asked how favorably they viewed each candidate, an overwhelming 82% said they had an unfavorable impression of Trump, compared to 41% who had a negative take on Clinton.
In the 2012 election, Barack Obama received approximately 76% of the gay/bisexual vote. (National polls at the time did not track transgender voters.)
