On Aug. 20, the Human Rights Campaign Foundation published an analysis of 2.45 million responses to the Census Bureau's Household Pulse Survey, collected between July 2021 and September 2024, and concluded that 12% of American adults identify as LGBTQ+, the highest figure any major survey has ever produced and three points above Gallup's most recent estimate of 9%. Importantly, the analysis also found that a larger-than-expected 2.34% of American adults, roughly one in 43, identify as transgender or gender-expansive, more than double the 1.1% Gallup reported earlier this year, and that young people are increasingly free to come out: nearly one in three adults under 25 now identify as LGBTQ+. LGBTQ+ people make up more than 10% of the adult population in 40 states plus the District of Columbia. The findings were published in a landmark report on HRC's website.
The results are remarkable. LGBTQ+ identification has grown across the United States through the first half of the 2020s. Gallup has been one of the primary tracking sources for LGBTQ+ identification, and its polling shows that LGBTQ+ people began identifying themselves as such to pollsters in growing numbers starting in the mid-2010s: the share of adults identifying as LGBTQ+ rose from 3.5% in 2012 to a record 9.3% in 2024, and held at 9% in 2025. But Gallup's figure comes from live telephone interviews, only ten thousand or so of them. HRC's analysis instead uses a self-administered government survey, run online by the Census Bureau during the years it was still asking about sexual orientation and gender identity, and found an even higher number. Importantly, there is reason to think the real number is higher still: respondents had to be comfortable disclosing their own sexual orientation and gender identity to a federal survey.
The findings also have particular significance for transgender people. Whereas earlier surveys and estimates placed transgender prevalence at somewhere between 0.5% and 1% of U.S. adults, that number has been rising in recent years, raising the possibility that being transgender is far more common than previously thought. HRC's dataset does not break out transgender people by age, but Gallup's polling puts trans identification among older generations at 0.2% to 0.3%, against 1.9% of Gen Z adults in its 2022 data. Younger generations are far more open to coming out as transgender or gender-expansive, and with one in 43 U.S. adults now identifying that way, Americans interact with transgender people constantly, knowingly or not, something advocates hope will build acceptance as more people come to understand that transgender people are already part of their communities.
The analysis also determined which states have the highest concentrations of LGBTQ+ people today. Some of the states at the top of the list are unsurprising. Among the 50 states, Oregon and Washington (17% and 16% LGBTQ+, respectively) come in at numbers one and two, and both carry a reputation for being incredibly queer-friendly, with strong civil rights protections. Colorado (14%) comes in at number three, a state that many transgender people have chosen when fleeing neighboring red states, and one with similarly strong protections. Perhaps surprisingly, number four on the list is Alaska (14%), an ostensibly red state with fewer civil rights protections, but also one of the only red states not to be fully subsumed by the anti-trans panic of recent years. California rounds out the top five, with 14% of adults identifying as LGBTQ+.
You can see the list here:
Collectively, the findings raise an important point. The onslaught of anti-LGBTQ+ panic has not reduced the number of LGBTQ+ people or scared the vast majority of them into hiding their identities. To the contrary, LGBTQ+ people feel more free to come out now than ever before. It is important to note, however, that 2025 and 2026 numbers could look different, given the extreme anti-LGBTQ+ attacks from the current Trump administration, a possibility hinted at by recent Gallup polling, which found the number holding flat in 2025, the first year since Gallup began tracking in 2012 that it did not rise.
Further research in this area is uncertain, however, as the Trump administration has dismantled federal data collection on LGBTQ+ people since taking office, stripping sexual orientation and gender identity questions from hundreds of federal data collection forms in its first year. "Reliable data are essential for understanding who lives in this country and what our communities need to thrive. Removing sexual orientation and gender identity questions from surveys like the one used for this analysis introduces significant gaps in this understanding. These findings show that LGBTQ+ people are a substantial and growing segment of the population, underscoring the need for our continued inclusion in data collection efforts," said Tari Hanneman, the HRC Foundation's senior director of research and education.
I wonder what the statistic is if you actually ask every adult
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