After the Democratic Party’s defeat, a chorus of elected officials and party operatives pointed the blame not at themselves, but at trans people who are part of one of the only constituencies Vice President Kamala Harris made gains with. Looking at the numbers, the Democratic Party should only be saying one thing to the LGBTQ community — thank you.
As a former press secretary for the Democratic Party, I am too familiar with the complicated puzzle that is trying to get to 50% plus 1. Each policy or statement doesn’t just sway a single group. Campaigning is about trying to make slight gains without losing more voters from another part of your coalition.
This seemed to have been lost on Harris. Looking at NBC’s 2024 and 2020 exit polls, compared to Biden, Harris made few gains, a point better than Biden with both Black and white women, and better results with voters making $100,000+. Yet, nowhere near enough to make up for her showing with Hispanic voters or that Harris underperformed with voters under 30 by 6 points. Young voters are a must-have for Democrats. In 2008, Barack Obama lost seniors but won — along with landslides in the House and Senate — with the backing of 66% of the youth vote.
So when I see Harris outperformed Biden by 22 points with the LGBTQ community (64% in 2020 to 86% in 2024), I expect the Democratic Party to look at that and see a bright spot in a bad election night. I also expect them to be happy voters elected Sarah McBride as the first transgender person to Congress.
Instead, the party sees one of the only parts of its base where it made gains and trashes them. Democratic members of Congress from Texas, New York, and Massachusetts have claimed the party lost because the party is too pro-trans rights. Forget the October NBC News interview where Harris refused to state support for trans youth, that the Democratic National Convention didn’t have a trans speaker for the first time since 2016, or the multiple Democrats who ran away from trans rights in the lead-up to the election.
As a person, I find blaming the trans community repugnant. As a former party staffer, I find blaming a community that is part of your base political suicide.
LGBTQ voters are not a non-consequential group. According to Gallop, 7.6% of adults are LGBTQ. This would mean of the 10,890,744 votes in Florida for president, roughly 828,000 were LGBTQ voters. A 22% shift in LGBTQ Florida voters equals 182,000 votes. Nationally, LGBTQ voters represented potentially 11.4 million presidential votes. This means a 22-point shift equals 2.5 million more LGBTQ votes for Harris. Even with this gain, Harris received 7.48 million fewer votes than Biden. For comparison, Trump received only 2.24 million more votes than he received in 2020.
Harris didn’t lose because of trans rights. Harris lost because millions of voters saw what she and Trump were campaigning on and decided neither option deserved their vote.
Alex Morash is a Wilton Manors resident and served as the statewide press secretary for the Florida Democratic Party in 2019 and 2020.
