Survey: Almost 1 in 10 American adults say they are LGBTQ+
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The share of American adults who say they are part of the LGBTQ+ community continues to rise, according to new Gallup polling released Thursday.
The big picture: LGBTQ+ people — who today are estimated to make up some 9.3% of U.S. adults according to the Gallup poll — have been rocked by the Trump administration's unprecedented barrage of executive actions, threatening access to health care, military service and federal recognition.
By the numbers: Between Gallup's polling in 2020 and 2024, the percentage of LGBTQ+ American adults has nearly doubled, with identification leaping as younger generations enter adulthood.
- More than one in five Gen Z adults (23.1%), which Gallup considers those born between 1997 and 2006, said they are LGBTQ+.
- Democrats and independents are also far more likely than Republicans to consider themselves to be LGBTQ+, as are people who live in cities and suburbs compared to those in rural areas.
Flashback: In 2012, when Gallup first started tracking LGBTQ+ identification, 3.5% of respondents considered themselves to be lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender.
- That number has nearly tripled in the ensuing 22 years.
- Between 2021 and 2023, the percentage inched from 7.1% to 7.6% — but 2024 saw the estimate hop more than a percentage point.
The latest: Despite making up only 1.3% of U.S. adults in Gallup's 2024 survey, transgender people in particular have recently been entangled in deeply personal political discourse, with lawmakers from outside the community weighing policies with widespread repercussions.
- Gallup's poll was conducted in 2024, before Trump began his second presidential term.
State of play: However, Trump's White House return has seen dozens of federal webpages and datasets wiped of references to transgender issues in accordance with the president's executive orders. Language that once addressed LGBTQI+ people now reads "LGB," including on the National Park Services' Stonewall monument website.
- Pages that a federal judge ordered to be restored feature a notice that the administration "rejects gender ideology" and that any information promoting it is "extremely inaccurate."
Yes, but: Attacks on the trans community, notably on access to gender-affirming care, preceded Trump's return to the White House.
Zoom in: Among the almost 900 LGBTQ+ people Gallup interviewed in 2024, more than half (56%) considered themselves to be bisexual.
- Again, younger generations of adults were far more likely to identify as bisexual than older people: According to Gallup's findings, more than half of Gen Z (59%) and millennial (52%) LGBTQ+ people are bisexual.
What's next: Jeff Jones, a senior editor at Gallup, told NBC News a notable milestone — one in 10 Americans identifying as LGBTQ+ — seems to be only a "few years away," where before he expected it "could have been a couple decades or so."
Methodology: Results for the Gallup poll are based on telephone interviews conducted in 2024, with combined random samples totaling 14,162 adults, aged 18 and older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. For results based on the total sample of national adults, the margin of sampling error is ±1 percentage point at the 95% confidence level.
Go deeper: All of the anti-trans executive orders Trump has signed
