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The 2016 election features a stark racial divide: Nonwhite people have a much more favorable view of Hillary Clinton than of Donald Trump, while non-Hispanic whites make up an overwhelming portion of Trump’s base. But there is no such racial divide among Americans who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender. Most LGBT adults, both white and nonwhite, rate Clinton higher than Trump.
That’s the finding of Gallup interviews with 282 LGBT adults and 9,387 non-LGBT adults from Oct. 1 through Oct. 20. The polling firm isn’t asking people directly whom they’re voting for in this election, but the favorability data suggests LGBT voters might not be splitting along racial lines in the way voters are overall. (LGBT men view Trump more favorably than LGBT women do, though both groups are equally warm on Clinton and show less gender divide than people who aren’t LGBT do.)
Gary Gates, the Gallup senior researcher who wrote up the firm’s findings, says the 2016 results look similar to 2012’s, although data was much sparser four years ago, when Gallup didn’t pose the favorability question to everyone in its daily tracking polls. Among LGBT adults, race and ethnicity wasn’t a significant driver of opinion about Barack Obama and Mitt Romney: Obama had a much higher favorability rating among both white and nonwhite LGBT people.
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