About 10 percent of adults now identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or something other than heterosexual in 2024, an increase that has almost doubled since 2020 from 5.6 percent, according to a Gallup poll released Thursday.
The uptick is mostly brought on by young adults part of Generation Z with more than one in five adults born between 1997 and 2006 identifying as LGBTQ+. Older generations, including Millenials, have lower rates of identification.
Identification rates among young adults have increased from 18 percent in 2020 to 22 percent in the last two years. Older generations are experiencing identification rate increases but not at the same levels, the polling found.
Millennials had a two-point increase from 10.3 percent to 12.0 percent during the same period and Generation X increased from 3.8 percent to 4.8 percent.
Baby boomers and the Silent Generation did not see any meaningful change. Fourteen thousand adults took part in the survey by completing telephone interviews. Respondents were asked whether they identified as straight or heterosexual, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or something else.
Almost 86 percent said they were straight, 5.2 percent said bisexual, two percent said gay, 1.4 percent said lesbian and 1.3 percent said transgender. Under one percent said another LGBTQ+ identity, like pansexual, asexual or queer. Five percent of respondents declined to answer.
Younger generations are more likely to consider themselves bisexual than are older generations.
More than half of Generation Z, about 59 percent, and Millenials, 52 percent, are bisexuals.
There are some gaps, however, when it comes to political beliefs. Fourteen percent of Democrats and 11 percent of Independents are more likely to identify as LGBTQ+ than are Republicans at three percent.
Additionally, LGBTQ+ identification is higher among people living in cities at 11 percent, compared with those in rural areas at seven percent.
Regarding gender, 31 percent of Generation Z women reported being LGBTQ+ vs Generation Z men, 12 percent of whom identified as something other than straight. For Millennials, 18 percent of women said they were not straight compared to nine percent of Millennial men.
In the 12 years since Gallup has been tracking the overall data, the number of respondents identifying as LGBTQ+ has nearly tripled.
The increase comes as President Donald Trump has dismantled protections for LGBTQ+ individuals. Shortly after taking office, the president signed an executive order that removed guardrails prohibiting discrimination based on gender or sexual orientation. In another order, the president directed the Department of Housing and Urban Development to repeal the Equal Access Rule, which protects LGBTQ+ people from discrimination in housing
The president has also announced intentions to ensure federal civil rights laws don’t cover anti-LGBTQ discrimination.
Civil rights groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union, have vowed to challenge the Trump administration’s policies in court.
