Misleading: 45 of Queer Men Are Backing Trump in 2020
The Claim
45% of all queer men are planning on voting for President Trump in the 2020 election.
News posted on
Emerging story
On September 15th, 2020, a story published by Newsweek with the title “Though Most LGBTQs Vote Democratic, New Poll Shows 45% of Queer Men Backing Trump” began circulating on social media, including being retweeted by President Trump. In the majority of the posts, largely among Conservative politicians and pundits, the commentary suggests that this poll represents 45% of all LGBTQ-voters or 45% of all queer men in the United states.
Misbar’s Analysis
Our investigation finds this claim to be highly misleading and largely misrepresented as it is currently being shared throughout social media. The original story by Newsweek is actually referring to a poll released the day before, September 14th, 2020, done by a queer men’s social app, Hornet, of its own user base. Only around 10,000 men were surveyed, through a voluntary, opt-in email, and only 1,200 of that group were Americans. Of those that responded, 51% answered they would be voting for Joe Biden while 45% said they would be casting their ballot for Donald Trump.
However, despite the seemingly large sample size, this particular poll is wholly unverifiable for a litany of reasons that make it completely inappropriate to extrapolate from. Given that the poll was both opt-in and completely anonymous, there is no way of knowing how accurate of a snapshot it is of the greater population in the United States. There’s also no way of knowing whether the information provided was accurate given the anonymity of the polling process. As such, the poll in question can hardly be considered credible or useful for political prediction when compared to the variety of peer-reviewed and open methodology polling that is widely available. In fact, the company has even added a note at the top of their release regarding the poll’s weak methodology and expressing their agreement that it should not be used as a model for the rest of the country.
We are even more skeptical when the data is compared to past polling available on this very subject. The Washington Blade reported that in 2016 exit polls only 14% of gay men indicated that they voted for Trump while 78% cast their ballot for Hilary Clinton. Additionally they asked Brian Schaffner, a political scientist at Tufts University, where things stand currently. He referred to a recent poll done in November 2019 in which just 26% of gay men polled were planning on voting for Trump, while 66% said they were going to vote for the Democratic nominee. While the actual results of the Hornet survey themselves may in fact also be dubious, it is clear that the messaging and promotion surrounding it is misleading at best.
