By two to one, midterm voters told the Exit Polls that “our society’s values on gender identity and sexual orientation … [are] changing for the worse.”
Fifty percent of the respondents said the values are changing for the worse, while 26 percent said they are changing for the better. Twenty-one percent declined to comment.
But the poll mashed together two contradictory issues — transgenderism and gay/lesbian sexual orientation.
Transgenderism insists that each person’s sexual identity is purely a choice and that people–including young children–can change their legal sex by merely declaring an opposite-sex identity.
But advocates for civic equality of gays and lesbians say that sexual identity is determined by biology, and also say that young people who are likely to grow up to be lesbian or gay should not be “trans-ed” by debilitating, for-profit drugs and surgery.
The mashed-up poll likely hides greater opposition to transgenderism than to sexual orientation.
Transgenderism has been pushed into national politics by a well-funded, aggressive effort by progressives. They’re using their wealth and political alliances to refine the nature of women and sexual identity via legislatures, courts, media, Hollywood, and schools.
However, the push has sparked a populist rejection that is backed up by a few well-funded advocacy groups.
The pushback against transgenderism is “The Surprise Issue Dominating the 2022 Midterms,” said a Nov. 7 article by Terry Schilling, president of the American Principles Project:
In just a few short years, transgender issues have risen to join the typical litany in Republican campaign advertising. In Nevada, Tulsi Gabbard (on behalf of Adam Laxalt) attacks Democrat Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto for going along with woke ideologues who “demonize police, support open borders, and believe biological men should compete against women in sports.” In South Dakota, a woman explains how she moved to the state because GOP Gov. Kristi Noem is “pro-second Amendment, anti-lockdown, pro-law enforcement, pro-family, and pro-women’s and girls’ sports.” In Florida, Sen. Marco Rubio attacks Democrat Rep. Val Demings for allowing abortions at the moment of birth, giving a billion dollars to convicted criminals and illegal immigrants, and for voting “to allow transgender youth sports and teaching radical gender identity without parental consent.”
A November 8 message from the APP reported:
Today, American Principles Project (APP) and its affiliated super PAC officially completed its nationwide 2021-22 midterm cycle, the largest in its history. APP spent a total of $15.8 million dollars in thirteen states to educate voters on threats to the family from left-wing cultural extremism, largely as a result of Democrat policies.
In particular, the campaign focused on drawing attention to woke efforts to encourage and enable children to undergo irreversible and dangerous sex-change procedures, inject sexually explicit content into schools, and allow biological males in female sports.
Below are several key numbers from the effort:
5.1 million+ unique voters reached
72.2 million+ completed campaign ad views
3.8 million+ text messages sent
26 total races engaged in
Prior exit polls were often wrong, partly because it has been difficult for the pollsters to interview a representative sample of all voters. CNN described the poll’s methodology:
The 2022 exit polls include interviews with thousands of voters, both those who cast a ballot on Election Day and those who voted early or absentee. That scope makes them a powerful tool for understanding the demographic profile and political views of voters in this year’s election. And their findings will eventually be weighted against the ultimate benchmark: the results of the elections themselves. Even so, exit polls are still polls, with margins for error – which means they’re most useful when treated as estimates, rather than precise measurements. That’s particularly true for the earliest exit poll numbers, which haven’t yet been adjusted to match final election results.
CNN Exit Polls are a combination of in-person interviews with Election Day voters and in-person interviews, telephone and online polls measuring the views of early and absentee by-mail voters. They were conducted by Edison Research on behalf of the National Election Pool. In-person interviews on Election Day were conducted at a random sample of 250 polling locations. The results also include interviews with early and absentee voters conducted in-person at 72 early voting locations, by phone or online. Results for the full sample of 12,458 respondents have a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points; it is larger for subgroups.