The state of our nation: Polling Americans’ priorities for election 2024

Originally published by The 19th.

This is the third annual poll from The 19th and SurveyMonkey, designed to shed light on what women, particularly women of color, and LGBTQ+ people think about the issues animating our politics. It comes as Americans face another critical election, one that could make Democrat Kamala Harris the first woman to hold the country’s highest office or give Republican Donald Trump a second term. Here’s what we learned about how Americans view the candidates, as well as opinions on abortion and on reproductive care more broadly, the ability to access gender-affirming care and more.

Interactive toplines | Full cross-tabs | Methodology | 2023 data | 2022 data

Election 2024

Among registered voters, Harris leads Trump, 44 percent to 41 percent, with 48 percent of women supporting the vice president and 47 percent of men supporting the former president.

To find out whether Harris’ chance to make history impacted voters’ enthusiasm, we split Harris supporters into two groups. Both groups were asked how excited they were to vote for her, but to one group, we pointed out that she would be the first woman president. When her gender was emphasized, 93 percent said they were somewhat or very excited; when it was not mentioned, 91 percent did. Among women, the percent who said they were very excited rose from 73 percent to 81 percent when her gender was mentioned.

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

Eighty-seven percent of Trump supporters are either very or somewhat excited to vote for him. Read the full story.

Reproductive health

The vast majority of Americans either want the government to protect access to in vitro fertilization (IVF) and assisted reproductive technologies, birth control and emergency contraception or to not make rules on them. Democrats are more likely to want elected officials to protect access, while Republicans are more likely to want them to not make rules.

Restrictions on assisted reproductive technologies like in vitro fertilization are extremely unpopular among Americans (9 percent support restrictions), as are limits on birth control methods like the pill and condoms (6 percent). Only 13 percent of Americans — though 22 percent of Republicans — believe politicians should restrict access to emergency contraception.

Overall, Americans’ opinions on abortion have moved little since last year; nearly two-thirds of voters think the procedure should be legal in all or most cases, with women more likely than men to say abortion should be legal in all cases. The poll did find a slight but persistent increase in the percent of people who think abortion should be legal when the pregnant person’s health or life is in danger, in cases of rape and incest and when the fetus is not expected to survive or is expected to have serious birth defects. This follows two years of political campaigns in which such circumstances have often been highlighted by candidates who oppose abortion bans.

Half of people in states where abortion is totally banned say the laws in their state are too restrictive; people in states where it is always or mostly legal are more likely to say laws in their state strike the right balance than those in states with partial or complete bans. Read the full story.

Gender-affirming care

There’s not as much polling about how Americans feel about gender-affirming care as on other issues central to the election, so The 19th and SurveyMonkey asked a number of questions this year and last as policies that impact transgender Americans became a focus for some politicians. This year, we found that 72 percent of Americans don’t believe that politicians are informed enough about gender-affirming care for minors to make fair policy, roughly the same as in 2023.

Last year, the majority of Americans said they opposed the right of minors to access gender-affirming care, but only 17 percent thought lawmakers should focus on restricting such care. So this year, The 19th and SurveyMonkey tried to probe the difference between opposition generally and the desire for politicians to take action. First, respondents were given this definition: “Gender-affirming care for transgender minors includes any kind of care designed to support and affirm their gender identity, including therapy, consultations with doctors, hormones or puberty blockers, other medication, and, rarely, surgery.”

Then, half the respondents were asked their opinion on the right of transgender minors to have access to gender-affirming care, and the other half were asked their opinion on lawmakers restricting such care.

Sixty percent of Americans oppose the right of transgender minors to access gender-affirming care, but these attitudes do not necessarily translate to support for bans. Fifty-four percent of Americans do not support lawmakers banning or restricting such care, including half of Republicans. The split indicates that legislation banning such care is not popular, even among many who don’t want minors to have access to gender-affirming care.

Similar to last year, a majority of Americans continue to support the right of transgender adults to access gender-affirming care (56 percent).

Education

The vast majority of Americans, across partisan lines, think schools should teach the country’s history of slavery, racism and segregation — including 85 percent of those who identify or lean Republican. More than half (51 percent) of Americans think students should learn about LGBTQ+ people in history or literature, but there’s a strong partisan split: 81 percent of Democrats strongly or somewhat favor that, while only 24 percent of Republicans do.

Sixty percent of Americans favor teaching Judeo-Christian values, such as the Ten Commandments, in schools, though there’s a partisan divide here, too, with 83 percent of Republicans and 41 percent of Democrats in favor.

Elections and democracy

Americans are more likely to trust that elections in their precinct will be run securely compared with their trust in the country’s elections overall. The largest difference was with Republicans, with 76 percent saying they trust elections in their precinct and 43 percent saying they trust elections in the country.

This 19th News “The State of Our Nation” poll was powered by SurveyMonkey, the fast, intuitive feedback management platform where 20 million questions are answered daily. It was conducted online from August 26, 2024, through September 4, 2024, among a national sample of 20,762 U.S. adults 18+. Respondents were selected from the more than two million people who take surveys on SurveyMonkey each day. Results for this non-probability survey have an error estimate of plus or minus 1.0 percentage point. Data have been weighted for age, race, sex, education and geography using the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey to reflect the demographic composition of the United States aged 18 and over. In addition, data for transgender respondents have been weighted for political party identification and gender using the KFF/The Washington Post Trans Survey to reflect the demographic composition of that subgroup. Learn more about SurveyMonkey elections research.