Donald Trump holds an LGBT+ Pride flag given to him by supporter. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty)
As much as a widening gulf has yawned between LGBT+ voters and US president Donald Trump over the years, apparently launching an array of anti-queer policies and, overall, not caring about queer people is enough to get them to vote for you.
A survey of around 1,200 queer male Americans found that around 45 per cent – around 540 – plan to vote for Trump.
Oh, no.
As much as Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden has netted an, albeit, slim majority of the queer male vote, securing 51 per cent, it signalled to pollsters how the president’s brand of bullish showmanship has roiled the political landscape.
Queer men have always voted reliably Democratic. Until now.
Indeed, the LGBT+ voting bloc has long been reliably Democratic. The poll conducted by queer dating app Hornet found that, overall among its users, around 66 per cent prefer Biden while 34 per cent support Trump.
But for queer Americans, pollsters said, the statistics were far tighter together. Just less than half of queer men said they do not support Trump, and a slither of just 11 per cent said they generally disagree with his stances.
Only 10 per cent emphatically said they do not support him “at all” and would not vote for him regardless.
Nine per cent were more conflicted, the poll found, in that they agreed with some but not all of his views. Only 27 per cent of respondents mostly or fully supported Trump.
Mapping out support for Trump, the poll found that across Hornet’s global 10,000 users, queer men on almost every continent other than Africa supported Biden more than Trump, across a spawning margin of 54 to 25 per cent.
In terms of countries, only two surveyed supported Trump over Biden, being Taiwan (51 per cent supporting him) and Russia, where nearly six in 10 supported Trump.
Donald Trump is billed as a pro-LGBT+ president, but queer people beg to disagree.
Trump and his campaign team have increasingly looked towards LGBT+ people as a way to buttress support amid the president’s cratering polls.
Among some of the Republican’s core voting blocs, such as white evangelicals, many do at least generally support LGBT+ rights, according to a 2019 survey.
But the president’s track record has seen him harshly erode many pre-existing LGBT+ rights. Trans rights, in particular, have been taken to with a buzz saw by the Trump administration, across countless federal departments and programs – defence, housing, health and education.
Moreover, during many of this year’s victories in the arena of LGBT+ rights as well as years’ worth of Pride months, Trump has remained silent or vastly indifferent.
And when the president has been pressed about certain LGBT+ issues, such as the federal blood ban on queer men as well as his own campaign for the global decriminalisation of homosexuality, he has been utterly clueless.