There’s a certain dance that happens every time a Republican wins an election: center-right Democrats and gay Republicans like Andrew Sullivan look for a scapegoat and decide it was transgender people that cost Democrats the election. The Republican consultant class, like Terry Schilling of the American Principles Project, conclude that their anti-transgender ads were what moved the needle, and not other factors. Democratic consultants agree with Republican consultants, form PACs, and use their anonymous donor dollars to urge Democrats to abandon their transgender constituents.
This is what happened after the 2016 election to some extent, and what all of them leaned into after 2024 when Trump made transgender people his number one focus in paid advertising. Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin made transgender youth in schools one of his main campaign themes in 2021 and eked out a two-point win over Terry McAuliffe after he ran an anemic, gaffe filled campaign.
Some pundits and consultants saw this as a statement on the effectiveness of this as a wedge issue rather than as a reflection of a poorly run Democratic campaign and declining poll numbers for President Biden. Trump leaned even further into this strategy in 2024, and the same people attributed the outcome to these ads, and not to Biden’s terrible poll numbers, inflation and the economy, and a mediocre Democratic candidate running a mediocre campaign.
So, when Republicans looked at the 2025 elections, particularly in Virginia, they saw Trump and Youngkin’s 2021 campaign as a blueprint to repeat the results of the past. Winsome Earle-Sears, the GOP gubernatorial candidate in Virginia this year, spent 57 percent of her advertising funds on anti-transgender ads. When she spoke to the media, she would usually try to pivot the questions to talking about Abigail Spanberger’s prior support for the transgender community. Republicans outside of Virginia tried to emulate this strategy, albeit to a lesser degree.
The result: Republicans lost Virginia in an epic fashion. Spanberger carried the state by almost 15 points, almost twice the margin Republican Ed Gillespie lost by in 2017 during Trump’s first term. Ghazala Hashmi, a Muslim woman, won the lieutenant governor election by 10-plus points, and Jay Jones won the attorney general race by 6 even after it was discovered he had fantasized about the death of his political opponent, former Republican Speaker Todd Gilbert, and wished his children would die in their mother’s arms. Democrats won every swing seat in the Virginia House, and six of 14 “lean R” seats, going from a narrow 51-49 split to 64-36. Every county in the state swung bluer.
Elsewhere, Zohran Mamdani won the mayor’s race in New York by nine points, after attending rallies for trans youth when he was still polling in the single digits. Republican Jack Ciattarelli lost by 13 points in New Jersey, and every Democratic justice in Pennsylvania won in a landslide.
The simple truth is one that has been told time and time again in the polls: The public doesn’t care about trans issues. A national Gallup poll showed that transgender issues ranked dead last among the 22 the survey asked about, with only 18 percent saying the issue was very important. A 2025 poll of Virginians had similar results, finding that only 3 percent of respondents had it as a top concern. It is difficult to make a coherent case that Americans are basing their votes on an issue which most of them could not care less about.
To make matters worse for Republicans, their rhetoric and plans for transgender people aren’t popular with voters either. Earle-Sears spent millions to tar Spanberger as a far-left radical on transgender issues, while Spanberger said as little as possible on the topic. But, according to a CNU poll, when voters were asked which candidate would better handle transgender issues, they chose Spanberger over Earle-Sears by a 50–37 margin. Given all of this data, it is impossible to conclude that this is a winner for Republicans.
But voters do care deeply about the economy, inflation, and prices. Seventy-nine percent of Virginians polled by Emerson rated the economy as a top priority. This pattern holds true at a national level, where voters cited the economy and cost of living as their top issue. And right now most of the public views the economy as fair to poor, and getting worse as a result of Trump’s economic policies. Nowhere in any of this did transgender issues even register.
What changed from 2024 to 2025 was who is running, and who is in charge. In 2024 Joe Biden was in charge and taking the blame for the high inflation of 2021-2023. Trump pulled in low propensity and low information voters in part by promising he’d juice the economy and lower the prices on everything by drastic amounts. He won on voter disaffection with Biden and on the strength of these guarantees. He failed to deliver the promised deflation (which his voters didn’t understand either), and now he and the party he has complete control over are paying the price at the ballot box.
There’s a certain irony to the fact that James Carville, who coined the phrase, “It’s the economy, stupid,” is one of those leading the charge to blame transgender people for Democratic fortunes in 2024. However, the empirical data shows that Republicans couldn’t spend money fast enough on anti-trans ads this year and mentioned LGBTQ issues in their emails at a rate twice that of Democrats.
Conversely, Democrats generally acted as if they would rather shove splinters under their fingernails than say anything about transgender people and steered clear of LGBT issues. Seventy-seven percent of voters see debates over transgender and nonbinary people as a distraction from more pressing priorities, and the only politicians talking about transgender people are Republicans.
The lesson from 2025 is to let Republicans spend as much as they want on anti-transgender ads: if they want to flush money down the toilet so much the better. But at the same time it is possible to reassure terrified transgender constituents, parents of trans youth, and other members of the LGBT community that they will protect them from Republican plans to make everything about their lives illegal.
When Democrats are pressed to provide answers on the hardest issues, there are available answers that answer the question, don’t throw transgender people under the bus, and don’t feed the fire. For instance, on the subject of transgender athletes, one such answer might be, “The government shouldn’t be involved in deciding who gets to play second grade soccer for a plastic participation trophy. For competitions where something more is at stake, sporting bodies already set medical standards that ensure fair competition and maximize inclusion, and we should follow those,”
When it comes to health care for transgender youth, the tried-and-true Democratic messaging on abortion provides guidance: “The government should stay out of complicated medical decisions that should be between doctors, parents, and patients.” It’s also the same message that Republicans have used on access to off-label medications.
From either of these answers, it’s an easy pivot to say, “These issues affect a very small number of people. What my constituents want to know is how am I going to bring home jobs? They want to feel secure and ensure that they can pay for food and a place to live. This is why I..,” and from here pivot to their economic policies, which are safe territory for Democrats.
The key takeaway for Democrats is that they do not have to throw their own constituents to the wolves to win elections: It is possible to shore up their base, reassure and protect their constituents, and maintain a focus on issues that voters care about all at the same time. Most politically aware transgender people live in absolute terror of what the Trump administration will do to them next. It costs Democrats nothing at the ballot box to stick to their guns with the people who overwhelmingly voted for them: promises of electoral vengeance by Republicans on these issues have proven to be nothing but hot air, unsupported either by polling logic, or election results.
