69 percent of americans say they don't know a single trans person. they have so many opinions anyway.

via The 19th, the 19th/YouGov toplines and Erin in the Morning

Question 16 asked 2,357 Americans whether they personally know someone who is transgender. Sixty-nine percent said no. Then the pollsters asked them about trans athletes, trans kids' health care, trans adults' health care and how much politicians should talk about trans people, and, reader, they had answers for all of it.

The poll is from The 19th, the nonprofit newsroom that covers gender and politics, working with YouGov. It ran online from Sept. 18 to 24 and was released on Wednesday, Sept. 30, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2.5 points. The full toplines are public, which is how we know what follows.

what the poll actually found

Two of its findings point in opposite directions, which is why two outlets led with two different stories on the same morning.

The 19th led with sports. Forty-five percent of adults said they are more likely to vote for a candidate who supports banning trans athletes from girls' and women's teams. Twenty percent said they would rather back someone who opposes those bans, 16 percent said a candidate's position does not matter to them, and 18 percent were not sure. Split by party, The 19th reports, that was 78 percent of Republicans, 46 percent of independents and 19 percent of Democrats.

Erin in the Morning led with health care, and the same toplines back her up. Asked whether lawmakers should ban or restrict gender-affirming care for trans minors, 45 percent opposed that and 38 percent favored it, with 17 percent unsure. On trans adults' right to access that care, the country is split almost exactly down the middle: 41 percent in favor, 40 percent opposed.

So the same sample opposes banning trans kids' medical care and wants to ban trans kids from the team. Nobody said the electorate had to be consistent. It only has to vote.

the part both parties should read

The most useful numbers are the ones about volume. Forty-two percent said politicians "should not focus on transgender issues" at all, more than chose protecting trans people (29 percent) or restricting gender-affirming care (28 percent). And 37 percent said the Democratic Party talks about trans issues too much, exactly the same share that said so about the Republican Party. Erin Reed flags that last one as a shift, since earlier polling had the public blaming Democrats more.

The Human Rights Campaign took that as a win. "These attacks are expensive, and they aren't really working," Ramiro Sarmiento, its national press secretary, told The 19th, arguing that after "hundreds of millions of dollars" in ads, 55 percent of voters either back a candidate who opposes sports bans or do not care much either way. That is one way to count it. The other way is that 45 percent is the single biggest bloc in the question, and campaigns can count too.

the number underneath

Back to question 16. Twenty percent said they know a trans acquaintance, 6 percent a close friend, 6 percent a family member, and 1 percent said the trans person they know is themselves. The 19th found that people with a trans friend or relative were far more likely to say trans people face "a lot" of discrimination: 86 percent of those with a close trans friend said so, against 51 percent of all adults.

Which is the oldest finding in gay politics, rerun on a new group. Opinions about us have always moved fastest at the dinner table, not the ballot box. The 27 states with trans athlete bans, per The 19th, suggest the dinner table has a lot of catching up to do. We wrote recently about a judge who told the Justice Department no on California's trans athletes; the fight in the courts and the fight in the polls are now running on the same clock, and the midterms are in November.