Elizabeth Warren is number one choice for Democrat candidate among LGBT voters, landmark poll finds
LGBT+ people who took part in the survey felt that Elizabeth Warren had the best chance of beating Donald Trump in a general election. (David Becker/Getty)
Elizabeth Warren is the top choice for LGBT+ voters as the democratic presidential candidate to take on Donald Trump, a landmark poll by YouGov and Out magazine has revealed.
The online survey asked 816 LGBT+ people who were likely to vote in the 2020 presidential election, and 31 percent said they would pick Senator Warren as the democratic candidate.
Warren came out far ahead of her rivals for the nomination in the survey, and was followed by Senator Bernie Sanders (18 percent), former Vice President Joe Biden (16 percent) and Mayor Pete Buttigieg (14 percent). Respondents also felt that Warren was the most likely to be able to beat President Trump in a general election.
Alissa Stollwerk, the vice president of YouGov Blue, told Out that Warren’s popularity among LGBT+ voters was “probably reflective of the fact that the LGBTQ+ voters in this survey identify as much more liberal than the Democratic primary electorate writ large.”
Stollwerk added: “Seventy-seven percent of LGBTQ+ Democratic primary voters identified in our survey as very or somewhat liberal, approximately 20 percentage points higher than the percentage of Democratic primary voters overall who identify as very or somewhat liberal in our surveys.”
Current general polling data for the democratic nomination shows Warren in third place, Sanders in second and Biden as the frontrunner.
But despite his popularly among Democrats in general, many LGBT+ people showed a strong dislike for Biden. According to the survey, 33 percent of respondents viewed him highly or somewhat unfavourably, which is more than every other candidate apart from Tulsi Gabbard and Marianne Williamson.
Warren released her LGBT+ rights manifesto last month, while Biden is yet to do so.
Elizabeth Warren has pledged to fight violence against trans women of colour
Asked to select the top five issues that were the most important to the LGBT+ community today, 73 percent of respondents said that violence against transgender people was critical.
This was followed by fully-inclusive nondiscrimination protections (60 percent), LGBT+ youth homelessness (59 percent), ensuring same-sex couples have access to adoption and foster care (58 percent), and banning conversion therapy (56 percent).
Warren has been outspoken about violence against trans women, and in her LGBT+ rights manifesto she vowed to “use every legal tool we have to prohibit the intersecting forms of discrimination that transgender women of colour face everywhere it occurs.”
YouGov and Out also asked LGBT+ people about their views on Trump. Just four percent said they approved of the job he was doing, and 89 percent said they believed he should be impeached.
Stollwerk admitted that the survey was a “snapshot”, but added: “This is the first survey of likely Democratic primary voters who identify as LGBTQ+, and it hopefully will help people understand the viewpoints of these Democratic voters, what issues are important to them, and what they want to see in the next Democratic nominee for president.”
