71% agree transgender people deserve the same rights as other Americans, yet just 40% oppose bills requiring transgender people use bathroom of their sex assigned at birth.

WASHINGTON (March 19, 2026) — A new national survey released today by PRRI profiles LGBTQ Americans and tracks Americans’ views on LGBTQ rights across all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Based on interviews with more than 22,000 adults throughout 2025, this new data from the 2025 PRRI American Values Atlas measures public opinion on LGBTQ nondiscrimination protections, religiously based service refusals, and same-sex marriage. It also asks Americans if they agree that transgender Americans deserve the same rights and protections as other Americans.

The survey finds that strong majorities of Americans support nondiscrimination protections for LGBTQ individuals (72%) and favor same-sex marriage (65%), although support for both measures has decreased slightly over the past three years (down from 80% and 69% in 2022, respectively). Roughly 6 in 10 Americans oppose allowing businesses to refuse service to LGBTQ people on religious grounds (59%, down from 65% in 2022).

Majorities of all major religious groups, except for Jehovah’s Witnesses, support nondiscrimination protections. Support ranges from 54% of white evangelical Protestants to 92% of Unitarian Universalists.

“Support for nondiscrimination protections for LGBTQ Americans and same-sex marriage remains high, including among most people of faith,” said Melissa Deckman, Ph.D., CEO of PRRI. “At the same time, there have been slight declines in support for LGBTQ rights over the past few years, largely reflecting growing party polarization.”

While most Americans agree that transgender people deserve the same rights and protections as other Americans, the majority of Americans (56%) also favor laws that require transgender individuals to use bathrooms that correspond to their sex at birth, with 40% opposing such laws.

“We see a disconnect among many Americans between broadly opposing discrimination against transgender Americans and growing support for bathroom bills,” said Deckman. “Yet this increase in support for bathroom bills nationally is largely a function of strong movement among Republicans, whose support has nearly doubled in the past decade, from 44% in 2016 to 81% today.”

In addition to partisan divisions on LGBTQ rights, PRRI data show that Americans’ views on these policies are also starkly divided depending on their state of residence and religious affiliation. Additional analysis finds that Americans who qualify as Christian nationalism Rejecters are notably more likely to support LGBTQ rights than those who qualify as Christian nationalism Adherents, Sympathizers, or Skeptics.

Democrats (90%) are the most supportive of LGBTQ nondiscrimination protections, followed by independents (76%) and Republicans (56%). While support has remained steady among Democrats and independents in recent years, Republican support has declined by 10 percentage points, from 66% in 2022 to 56% in 2025.

Support among young Americans ages 18-29 for nondiscrimination protections has decreased from 80% in 2015 to 70% in 2025, largely driven by a 24-point drop among young Republicans during this time (74% v. 50%). Support among older groups of Americans has stayed at similar rates over the past decade (among Americans aged 30-49) or increased among Americans aged 50 or older.

Over 8 in 10 residents of Massachusetts (85%), the District of Columbia (82%), Maryland (82%), and Alaska (81%) support nondiscrimination laws. By contrast, the lowest support for nondiscrimination protections can be seen in Mississippi (60%), Wyoming (57%), and Arkansas (53%).

Around two-thirds of Americans support same-sex marriage, including majorities in nearly every state, with Democrats supporting same-sex marriage rights at far higher rates than Republicans.

Nearly two-thirds of Americans support allowing same-sex couples to marry legally (65%), though Republicans (49%) are notably less likely than Democrats (83%) and independents (69%) to support same-sex marriage. Majorities of most religious groups support same-sex marriage, except for Latter-day Saints (47%), Hispanic Protestants (45%), white evangelical Protestants (37%), Muslims (37%), and Jehovah’s Witnesses (19%).

The only states without majority support for same-sex marriage are Mississippi (47%) and Arkansas (50%). Majorities in every other state and the District of Columbia support same-sex marriage, with the highest support in Massachusetts (85%), Rhode Island (85%), and Vermont (81%).

Most Democrats (82%) and independents (60%) oppose allowing businesses to refuse service to LGBTQ people on religious grounds, compared with around one-third of Republicans (35%). Since 2015, opposition has increased by 8 percentage points among Democrats (from 74% to 82%). Among Republicans, it has declined by 5 percentage points (from 40% to 35%).

A large majority of Americans (71%) agree that “transgender people deserve the same rights and protections as other Americans,” compared with 24% of those who disagree. This is split across party lines with 88% of Democrats and 77% of independents in agreement, compared with 57% of Republicans.

More than 8 in 10 Republicans (81%) favor requiring transgender people to use bathrooms that correspond to their sex at birth, compared with 51% of independents and 30% of Democrats. Support among Republicans has nearly doubled since 2016 (44%), while support among independents increased more than 10 points (from 37% to 51%), and remained fairly consistent among Democrats (from 27% to 30%).

Other Notable Findings:

• 1 in 10 Americans identify as LGBTQ. Among Americans ages 18-29, 20% identify as LGBTQ, compared with smaller shares among those ages 30-49 (11%), ages 50-64 (5%), and ages 65 and older (4%).
• Women ages 18-29 (26%) are about twice as likely as men in the same age group (14%) to identify as LGBTQ, driven in part by higher bisexual identification among young women than men (13% vs. 6%).
• LGBTQ Americans are more likely to identify as Democrats (40%), compared with 28% of all Americans, and are nearly twice as likely to identify as politically liberal (51% vs. 26%, respectively).
• The majority of LGBTQ Americans identify as religiously unaffiliated (51%), compared with 27% of all Americans.

Methodology

The survey was designed and conducted by PRRI. The survey was made possible through the generous support of the Arcus Foundation and the Unitarian Universalist Veatch Program at Shelter Rock.

The survey was carried out among a random representative sample of 22,111 adults (age 18 and up) living in all 50 states in the United States. Among those, 20,771 are part of Ipsos’s KnowledgePanel and an additional 1,340 were recruited by Ipsos using opt-in survey panels to increase the sample sizes in smaller states. Interviews were conducted online between February 28 and December 8, 2025. The margin of error for the national survey is +/- 0.87 percentage points at the 95% level of confidence, including the design effect for the survey of 1.7. In addition to sampling error, surveys may also be subject to error or bias due to question wording, context, and order effects.

About PRRI

PRRI is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, nonpartisan organization dedicated to conducting independent research at the intersection of religion, culture, and public policy.

#          #          #