When Trans Issues Become ‘Ideology’
Two surveys of Americans, published just days apart, reveal the limitations and revelations of polling.
Analysis, by Billie Jean Sweeney
Two polls published within 10 days of one another in January offered markedly different windows into Americans’ perception of the major parties on a range of issues, notably those involving trans people.
A poll published Jan. 29 by Fox News showed that voters backed the Democratic Party’s handling of trans issues by a wide margin, 22 percentage points. A week earlier, on Jan. 20, a survey published by YouGov was murkier.
Transphobia was identified by 44 percent of YouGov respondents as a top problem for the Republican Party, but its survey also introduced an ill-defined and highly politicized term in its questions: Transgender ideology.
When offered that term and “gender ideology” among 23 potential problems for each party, a sizable percentage of respondents, over a third, chose them as top concerns for both the Democratic and Republican parties.
But what exactly is “gender ideology”? The Trans Journalist Association describes it as “a charged term commonly deployed by anti-trans commentators and activists that implies trans people, merely by being trans, are participating in a political activity or have a political agenda.”
It has longstanding roots in right-wing circles. The term “gender ideology” has been wielded by conservative activists for three decades, depicted as a threat to family and biblical authority, the scholar Judith Butler noted in her 2024 book “Who's Afraid of Gender?”
The Fox poll, by contrast, uses the more neutral terminology “transgender issues” in its examination of Americans’ perceptions of how each party is handling 50 policy areas. Journalist Erin Reed dug deeper into the Fox data to show that voters across a broad spectrum of America — whether by race, geographic location or religion — preferred Democrats’ approach to trans issues. Only among white Evangelicals do Republicans hold an edge.
The political commentary surrounding polling on trans issues has vastly overstated what’s in the actual data, according to an analysis by Alys S. Brooks for Assigned Media found in November. Her analysis of four major pollsters, YouGov among them, showed that YouGov’s respondents frequently had higher levels of uncertainty than Gallup’s, though it did not include polls from Fox News. This suggests wording and methodology could have a particularly big influence on results.
In a response to my queries about the Jan. 20 YouGov poll, Carl Bialik, the organization’s US politics editor and vice president of data science, said the goal was to offer a wide range of options as potential concerns for each party.
He said YouGov based the inclusion of "transgender ideology” in its list of possible problems for each party because the term had been widely used by conservative commentators after Charlie Kirk’s killing in September.
Bialik disagreed, at least in part, with my suggestion that other potential concerns on YouGov’s list, such as misogyny, fascism and anti-Christian bias, are better defined and more easily understood by respondents on their face.
“I think Americans would have a wide range of definitions for many of the terms,” he said. “What is and isn't fascism is a major current topic of discussion.”
Bialik did note that YouGov might be interested in doing a followup that “probes this question further, perhaps with open-ended questions.”
YouGov’s online surveys employ opt-in methodology, which has drawn criticism, but the organization is prolific and often quoted. It is not included among The New York Times list of “select” pollsters, though Nate Cohn, the Times’s chief political analyst in charge of demographics and polling, noted in an analysis that it stands above the field of online surveys and has produced solid results.
The polls produced by Fox in conjunction with Beacon Research and Shaw & Co., on the other hand, rely on the traditional methodology of random sampling. Despite the news division’s near-daily production of anti-trans propaganda, the polling by Fox and its partners is generally well regarded.
It’s important to delve into the details of any polling to understand both its limitations and its revelations, Kae Petrin, president of the Trans Journalists Association, said in an interview. Methodology affects results, as well as a pollster’s language and framing.
“Did people interact with different language differently? Well, they probably did because that’s how polls work,” Petrin said.
“Sometimes people assume that data, because it is produced through scientific methods, is inherently more accurate than, say, a quotation from a person. But data is still designed by people. In the case of polls, someone decides, ‘How are we going to write the language for this question?’”
Contextualizing polls is vital, especially so for journalists, Petrin said. “Sometimes we do need to say, ‘They asked about the phrase gender ideology. Here is the context in which that phrase is being used by people who have openly advocated for the extinction of trans people.’”
In her Assigned Media analysis, Brooks offered this advice: “Ultimately, polling doesn’t dictate what to advocate for or how to fight for it. It doesn’t reveal objective truths about us or prove our legitimacy. What it does, however, is illuminate the ground we’re fighting on.”
Until now, the relatively scarce polling on trans issues has had an outsized effect on the political landscape. An issue that has been seized upon by pundits and supposed strategists as a weakness for Democrats may ultimately be a strength for the party – at least if you believe the polling by Fox and its partners.
Billie Jean Sweeney (she/her) is a freelance editor, reporter and advocate. She helped direct international news coverage for The New York Times and coverage of New York City for The Associated Press. She also served as editorial director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, where she defended international press freedom. At The Hartford Courant she led an award-winning investigation into the deadly use of restraints in mental health institutions. For Assigned Media, she’s written about the right wing’s attacks on young trans athletes and how mainstream media adopted and spread anti-trans disinformation.