Ron DeSantis, a Republican who has passed some of the most extreme anti-LGBTQ+ laws in the country, and Democratic Rep. Sarah McBride of Delaware, the first transgender member of Congress, don’t have much in common. But they do have a similar assessment of what drove Republicans’ historic losses in last week’s midterms.
Only days before, while speaking at the Florida state Capitol, DeSantis also pinned the GOP defeat to the party’s fixation on trans people. Their assessments align with what political analysts on both sides and LGBTQ+ advocates have been saying since election night: Voters were simply not moved by Republicans’ singular focus on attacking trans people, even as they approved a number of ballot measures restricting trans athletes and gender-affirming care. Republicans went all in on the messaging, pouring $400 million into anti-trans ads this election cycle, according to the Human Rights Campaign.
Contributions to Republican-aligned groups and GOP candidates by Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, totaled nearly half a billion dollars, The New York Times reported, millions of which were spent on digital and television ads hammering Democrats over their past support for trans rights. Musk’s America PAC itself churned out dozens of ads painting Democratic candidates as supporters of a “radical trans agenda” in the election’s final stretch. James Talarico, the Texas Democrat who just won his Senate seat, was a frequent target of those ads.
Republican candidates, he said, did not campaign on a clear platform or offer voters adequate solutions to their most pressing concerns. In polls released ahead of Election Day, Americans consistently ranked trans issues low on their list of priorities. Beyond Washington, D.C., Democrats won the majority of state governorships for the first time in more than 15 years and gained control of state legislatures in Arizona, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Nevada and Minnesota.
Republicans leaned heavily into anti-trans rhetoric on the campaign trail, hoping to cash in on broadening support for restrictions on trans rights while steering clear of voter frustration over the rising cost of living. In a recent 19th/YouGov poll, nearly half of adults said they were more likely to vote for a candidate who supports banning trans athletes from girls’ and women’s sports over one who does not. But survey data also suggests that most Americans believe trans people should have equal rights, protections and general respect.
More than a third of adults in the 19th/YouGov poll said politicians shouldn’t focus on trans issues and that both Democrats and Republicans talk “too much” about trans people. In a 2024 survey by Data for Progress, a progressive think tank, more than half of voters said political campaign ads targeting trans people “have gotten mean-spirited and out of hand.” In 2024, after Trump’s decisive victory over former Vice President Kamala Harris, some political strategists attributed the party’s success to its focus on Democrats’ support for trans rights. They frequently pointed to an ad from Trump’s reelection campaign that claimed Harris “is for they/them,” while “President Trump is for you.” But in a September memo to GOP candidates, the conservative advocacy group American Principles Project warned that, this time around, “pressing the advantage on these issues alone, while important, may not be sufficient.” Republicans “overlearned” the lessons from 2024, said Lanae Erickson, senior vice president at Third Way, a centrist Democratic political advocacy group.
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