A new poll shows that even a plurality of people who voted for Kamala Harris in 2024 oppose equal sports education opportunities for trans youth.

An Economist/YouGov poll asked U.S. adults if they support or oppose “allowing transgender student athletes to play on sports teams that match their gender identity, rather than the sex they were assigned at birth?” Overall, only 22% of respondents said they support it, while 67% said they opposed letting trans kids play with others of their gender.

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Among people who voted for Harris, only 39% said they support trans student athletes, while 43% said they oppose them. The difference was more stark among people who voted for the current president; only 6% supported trans student athletes and 89% opposed.

Men (72%) were somewhat more likely to oppose trans student athletes compared to women (62%), despite how the issue is often presented as a battle for women’s rights.

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People over the age of 45 were less likely to support trans student athletes than those who were younger. Meanwhile, Black and white respondents opposed trans student athletes at 66% and 68%, respectively, while Hispanic people were less opposed, at 56%.

The poll was conducted from January 23 to 26 and involved 1,684 respondents.

Part of the reason that the poll may have found such low support for trans student athletes is that it presented letting trans kids participate as their gender or as their sex assigned at birth as two equally likely possibilities, when it’s unlikely that students who have already started transitioning will participate in sports at all if they can’t participate with others of their gender. A trans girl forced to play on the boys’ team or a trans boy forced to play on the girls’ team could be outed or feel very uncomfortable in such a situation.

Moreover, the science is less conclusive when it comes to a supposed competitive advantage than many Americans believe. Trans girls who take puberty blockers and hormone therapy before they undergo male puberty haven’t been shown to be any different from cis girls in terms of sports ability, something that many people who are not informed on the issue refuse to accept, even in the face of evidence. There is currently a Supreme Court case specifically about trans student athletes in this situation, and some Supreme Court justices refused to believe experts’ testimony saying that, absent male puberty, trans girls won’t have any sort of advantage.

The degree to which having undergone male puberty and then hormone therapy provides any advantage at all is in dispute, and there isn’t much research on the topic. Some studies have even found that transitioning could give trans women a disadvantage in sports compared to cis women.

Last, polls show an increasing hostility towards trans kids playing sports ever since Republicans started a national moral panic about the issue following their losses in the 2020 election.

A 2021 Gallup Poll found that only 34% of American adults believed that trans people should be allowed to play sports on a team that matched their gender, while 62% said that trans people should be forced to play sports on teams that match their sex assigned at birth. But a 2025 Gallup Poll found less support for trans student athletes, wtih 69% opposing letting them play as their gender and 24% supporting.

A 2025 NBC News poll found that only 25% of Americans supported trans women being allowed to participate in women’s sports, while 75% opposed. That survey did not specifically ask about students.

“Sports… is one of our most emotional touch points as Americans,” nonbinary ESPN journalist Katie Barnes told LGBTQ Nation last year. “Broadly, we love sports, and we love to hate sports and hate each other because of who we root for. And you know, sports and fandom is something that is both developed through participation and also is hereditary.”

“And then when you overlay that with ideas about gender norms… where folks have feelings about the way that things should be in this world, and that is being refracted through the dual lens of gender and sport. And when you couple that with a very clear argument from those who are in favor of a restrictive policy that ‘boys shouldn’t play girls’ sports,’ well, that is going to get a lot of people going, right?”

The Economist/YouGov poll also asked people whether they thought that “society has gone too far/been about right/not gone far enough in accepting people who are transgender.” 44% thought society has gone “too far” while 30% said that society “has not gone far enough.” Men, people over 45, and Republican voters were all more likely to say that society has gone “too far.”

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