The Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Vote in a More Tolerant Canada

Abstract

Research on the political preferences of lesbian, gay and bisexual (LGB) voters shows that they are more progressive than heterosexuals. However, few studies consider differences between heterosexual, gay/lesbian, and bisexual men and women. Furthermore, little is known about how these preferences have changed as society has become more accepting of diverse sexualities. We offer an analysis of Canadian LGB voters’ political preferences a decade and a half after same-sex marriage was legalized. Consistent with prior research, we find that gay men, and, to a lesser extent, bisexual men, are more left-wing than heterosexual men. A more novel finding is that bisexual women are the most left-wing group. Lesbian women are only slightly to the left of heterosexual women. While left-wing bisexual women are growing in number, the overall gap between LGB and heterosexual voters has remained stable across generations, because marriage narrows some of the preference gaps.

From Gender Gap to Gender Gaps: Bringing Nonbinary People into Political Behavior Research

“…4 In fact, past work on masculinity and femininity scales typically assumes that 2 Indeed, data on nonbinary identities are important to collect even in more traditional survey contexts because these respondents are part of the broader LGBTQ community. Many studies of LGBTQ political behavior still use data on lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) respondents (Egan, 2012;Guntermann and Beauvais, 2022;Hertzog, 1996;Schaffner and Senic, 2006;Turnbull-Dugarte, 2022;Wurthmann, 2023) or members of same-sex couples (Turnbull-Dugarte, 2020a;Turnbull-Dugarte and Townsley, 2020;Turnbull-Dugarte, 2021). However, if researchers aim to examine overall differences between non-LGBTQ and LGBTQ respondents, for example, or adjust for LGBTQ identities in regression analyses, they need to measure gender minority identities-such as transgender and nonbinary identities-as well as sexual minority identities.…”

“…LGBTQ organizations typically have ties to the political left. However, to date, most studies of LGBTQ political behavior overwhelmingly rely on data from LGB people (Egan, 2012;Guntermann and Beauvais, 2022;Hertzog, 1996;Schaffner and Senic, 2006;Turnbull-Dugarte, 2022;Wurthmann, 2023) or same-sex couples (Turnbull-Dugarte, 2020a,b, 2021. These studies overwhelmingly find that LGB people or individuals in same-sex couples tend to be more left-leaning (in party identification, voting and/or ideology) than comparable straight or heterosexual people.…”

“…These studies overwhelmingly find that LGB people or individuals in same-sex couples tend to be more left-leaning (in party identification, voting and/or ideology) than comparable straight or heterosexual people. However, there is important variation by gender, sexual identity, and race among LGBs (Jones, 2021;Guntermann and Beauvais, 2022;Strolovitch, Wong, and Proctor, 2017). If nonbinary people are similar to (cisgender or non-transgender) LGBs, then we might expect them to be left-leaning simply because they are part of the LGBTQ umbrella.…”

Voting Behaviour in Canada: The State of the Discipline

“…This changed with the 2019 CES. Using these data, Guntermann and Beauvais (2022) revealed that bisexual women were distinctively left-leaning, whereas bisexual men were more right-leaning than gay men. When it came to vote intention, bisexual women were more likely to opt for the NDP, whereas lesbian women preferred the Liberals.…”

“…For example, we obviously cannot randomly assign some people to be Conservatives and others to be Liberals. One option is to use matching methods to mimic the logic of the classic experiment, as Guntermann and Beauvais (2022) do when examining the impact of marriage on the vote choices of LGB voters. However, matching is limited by data availability and cannot rule out reverse causation 13 .…”