The Increasingly LGBT Electorate

by Michael Jones · 2009-05-07 02:29:00 UTC
Topics:

Election Day

How influential are LGBT people when they vote?  According to Chris Bowers of Open Left, the LGBT voting bloc is on its way to becoming at least 7 percent of the overall electorate.

How significant is that 7 percent?  Well, figuring that most LGBT people tend to vote Democratic (although not all - hello, gay Republicans!), that 7 percent could play an increasingly large role in elections to come.  Here's what Bowers has to say:

Determining the percentage of the LGBT population has long been a difficult task for demographers. Several methodologies have yielded widely varying results from between 2% and 13% of the overall population. However, despite these wide variations, for the purposes of determining the LGBT percentage of future electorates, key pieces of data make it clear that the self-identified LGBT population is already 4% of the electorate (2004 and 2008 exit polls both confirm this), and will rise to at least 6% by 2028 at the latest. Further, it is possible that the electorate could become 7% self-identified LGBT at some point in the 2030's. Given the widely differing partisan tendencies of the LGBT and non-LGBT population, this 2-3% increase represents a not insignificant impact on national election results.

Bowers estimates that a larger LGBT electorate could give Democrats an advantage, anywhere from .7% to 1.8%.  Those numbers, on their surface, seem like small potatoes.  But an extra .7% would have given Al Gore in the election in 2000, and an extra 1.8% would have given Kerry the election in 2004.  So these numbers could have massive implications for Presidential candidates in elections to come, especially if Republicans (Sarah Palin, Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney) continue to sound the horns of a culture war in an effort to win votes.

Michael Jones is a Change.org Editor. He has worked in the field of human rights communications for a decade, most recently for Harvard Law School.
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