Anti-trans political ads backfired 2-to-1 in the 2026 midterms

Political ads attacking transgender people backfired badly in the 2026 midterm elections. A Morning Consult poll commissioned by GLAAD and fielded after the 2026 midterm elections found that 37% of voters were less likely to support candidates running anti-trans ads, against only 18% more likely. More than $187 million was spent on this messaging, and it alienated voters across every demographic tested.

$187 million, and it bought a backlash

More than $187 million. Seventy-eight million of it in Texas alone. Twenty-six million in Ohio. Someone looked at trans people, decided they were the right target, and spent the kind of money that could fund years of gender-affirming care on telling voters to be afraid of them.

And the voters said: no, thank you.

The Morning Consult survey interviewed 2,026 registered voters between 4 and 6 November 2026, with a margin of error of 2%. Its finding is unambiguous. Thirty-seven percent of midterm voters reported being less likely to support a candidate who ran anti-trans ads. Eighteen percent said more likely. That is a net negative of 19 points, nationally, across the board.

In states where the ad spend was heaviest and anti-trans ballot measures were on the ticket, it was worse: 46% less likely, 15% more likely, a gap of 31 points. Three-to-one, in the states where campaigns went hardest at this. That is not a narrow miss, it is a strategic catastrophe.

The numbers that should embarrass everyone who signed off on this

The coalition that this messaging was supposed to leave behind has been used as a rhetorical prop for years. Rural voters. Southern voters. People without college degrees. The assumption has been that you could always count on those communities to respond to fear of trans people.

Rural voters: 47% less likely to support a candidate running anti-trans ads, 13% more likely. A net margin of minus 34.

Southern voters: 40% less likely, 17% more likely. Minus 23.

Non-college-educated voters: 37% less likely, 17% more likely. Minus 20.

These are not the numbers of a base being energised. These are the numbers of a strategy that failed on its own terms, among the very voters it was designed to mobilise.

What voters actually cared about

Fifty-nine percent of midterm voters said cost of living was their primary reason for turning out. Thirty-one percent named healthcare access and costs. Five percent named trans issues, despite 70% having been exposed to media coverage on the topic in the past month.

Five percent. After all of that noise, all of that money, all of those ads. In the states where the spending was heaviest, 58% of voters prioritised affordability, 6% prioritised trans issues.

People are worried about whether they can pay their rent and their heating bills and their grocery receipts. Candidates chose to talk about trans people instead, and voters noticed the gap between what they were being sold and what they actually needed.

Voters knew exactly what was happening

This is the part I find most striking. Fifty-six percent of midterm voters expressed cynical views about why politicians raised trans issues at all. Twenty percent said it was to divide voters along party lines. Sixteen percent said it was to get media attention. Twelve percent said it was to avoid discussing pressing topics.

Only 12% believed candidates were responding to genuine concerns they were hearing from constituents. Only 11% thought candidates were raising trans issues because they genuinely wanted to address a social issue that matters.

The voters are not confused about this. They know political theatre when they see it. They know when they are being handed a distraction. And in 2026, in sufficient numbers to shift outcomes, they declined to play along.

What the data actually tells us about where people are

The data does not tell us that the majority of American voters are enthusiastic supporters of trans rights. It tells us something more specific, and in some ways more important: that using trans people as a political weapon is unpopular, that voters across geographic, demographic, and political lines find it cynical and unappealing, and that it costs candidates more votes than it wins.

That is not the same as a country that has resolved the question of trans equality. It is a country that is weary of being manipulated, and that recognised manipulation when it was happening.

But it also tells us something else: the people spending $187 million to make trans lives harder were wrong about where the public is. They were wrong about rural voters. They were wrong about Southern voters. They were wrong about working-class voters. They built a strategy on an assumption about ordinary people that turned out to be false, and ordinary people proved it false at the ballot box.

Trans people did not need anyone's sympathy to win this one. They needed voters to notice that they were being used, and voters did.