In response, Human Rights Campaign Interim President Joni Madison released the following statement:
“The LGBTQ+ community is a diverse and ever-growing force in the United States as the number of American adults who identify as LGBTQ+ continues to grow each year,” said Joni Madison, Interim Human Rights Campaign President. “This growth shows the impact of a more inclusive society and, closely mirrors HRC findings. Both emphasize the need to codify legal protections against discrimination and implement LGBTQ+ inclusive data collection at federal, state, local and private levels. With more LGBTQ+ people than ever before living openly and embracing their identity, the fight for LGBTQ+ equality in America must continue to represent this ever-growing and beautiful community.”
Key Points from the poll:
- Today, results from a 2021 Gallup poll were released that showed the estimate of LGBTQ+ identifying American adults has risen by more than a full percentage point from Gallup’s previous 2020 update, and doubled in size from the 2012 estimate, when Gallup first measured it.
- 7.1% of U.S. adults identify as LGBTQ+. The current estimate is up from 5.6% in Gallup’s 2020 data and 4.5% in Gallup’s 2017 data.
- One in five Gen Z adults (those aged 18-24 at the time of the survey) identifies as LGBTQ+, more than any previous generation.
- LGBTQ+ identification has grown across all identities over the last year.
- Bisexual identification is most common; accounting for more than 56% of all LGBTQ+ identified adults, and approximately 4% of the U.S. adult population.
- An additional third of LGBTQ+ adults identified as gay (20.7%) and/or lesbian (13.9%), accounting for approximately 2.5% of the U.S. adult population.
- An estimated one in ten LGBTQ+ adults identifies as transgender, accounting for 0.7% of the U.S. adult population. This includes approximately 2.1% of Gen Z adults, 1% of Millenials, 0.8% of women, and 0.6% of men.
The results are based on aggregated 2021 data, including interviews with more than 12,000 American adults. While LGBTQ+ identification has been stable amid older generations, it is consistently rising among younger generations. From 2020 to 2021, the number of Gen Z adults that identify as LGBTQ+ has increased from one in six in 2020 to one in five in 2021, an increase of four percentage points in a single year.
In December 2021, the Human Rights Campaign released an analysis of data in the Census Bureau’s recent Household Pulse Survey, which found roughly 8% of respondents identified themselves as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender, with millions more potentially identifying as terms beyond these – suggesting previous surveys may also have undercounted the population. Gallup’s recent survey results corroborate this estimate, and based on the 2021 survey, Gallup anticipates that the proportion of LGBTQ+ Americans “should exceed 10% in the near future.”
