By every account, Republicans are facing a disaster in this fall’s elections. Donald Trump is incredibly unpopular and seems intent on doing everything possible to increase his party’s unpopularity. The odds are very high that Republicans will lose the House, and Democrats are increasingly optimistic about capturing the Senate as well, with competitive races even in deep-red strongholds like Texas and Iowa. 

Faced with looming electoral disaster, Republicans are turning to their old standby, anti-LGBTQ+ attacks. This year, the focus is on anti-trans attacks, including anti-trans ballot initiatives in four states. Ballot measures in Washington and Arizona would prohibit trans athletes from participating in sports, while a ballot measure in Missouri would ban health care for trans youth. The fourth state, Colorado, has both types of initiatives on the ballot.

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“This is absolutely being used as ballot candy,” Quentin Savwoir, director of programs and strategy at the left-leaning Ballot Initiative Strategy Center, said last spring. 

In the past, that was certainly the case. Witness the rash of anti-marriage initiatives two decades ago, which Republicans used to juice turnout. Now, however, the tactic smacks of desperation. The fact is that there’s not much the GOP can do to distract voters, even their own, from Trump’s disastrous presidency.

Far and away the top issue for voters these days is the economy and Trump’s ongoing attempts to sabotage it. A recent Marquette Law School poll found that half of those surveyed cited inflation/affordability, and the economy more generally, as the most important issue facing the country.

So where does concern about trans issues rank? Just about at the bottom of polls. 

A Fox News survey released in April found that 0% – yes, zero – cited trans issues/wokeness as their top concern. In that survey, 43% cited economic issues as the top issue, followed by corruption and the Iran War.

Now, the 0% doesn’t mean that absolutely none of the 1,001 registered voters surveyed cited the issue. What it does mean is that so few responded that trans issues were a top concern that it was statistically insignificant.

Just as interesting, 56% of voters said that Democrats would handle trans issues better, compared to 43% for Republicans. For Republican candidates looking to pull some swing voters onto their side, that lopsided split isn’t a good sign.

What Republicans are hoping to do is motivate their base to show up on election day. However, even the base is in no mood to vote for Republicans. Party operatives are panicked at what they are seeing in their outreach efforts. Approximately one in five GOP voters is at risk of sitting out the election or (gasp!) voting for a Democrat. On top of that, voters who picked Trump in 2024 are more likely not to vote regularly.

No wonder Trump is going around telling people that they should vote as if he’s the candidate. “Pretend, please, I’m on the ballot,” he said last week.

The problem Republicans have is that they want to pretend that he’s not because he is such a drag on candidates. They are already taking tentative steps to separate themselves from Trump. That’s a vain exercise, given how much they fear him and have tied themselves to him already.

Of course, the anti-trans initiatives owe a lot to Trump himself. He discovered that bashing trans people was a popular applause line at his rallies, so he keeps returning to it. In fact, he chastised attendees at a press conference for not applauding when he spoke about banning trans athletes. He is probably also under the illusion that the anti-trans ad attacking Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential campaign helped put him over the top. (There’s evidence that the ad, which got far more play in the political press than bigger issues, wasn’t nearly as important as the Harris campaign’s refusal to come up with a forceful rebuttal.) 

Republicans seem to have forgotten just how well they did the last time they hammered on anti-trans issues. Just last year, Virginia gubernatorial nominee Winsome Earle-Sears made attacks on trans rights a centerpiece of her campaign. Voters turned out in record numbers, alright. Earle-Sears lost by more than 14 percentage points.

That election was widely seen as a referendum on Trump. Since then, Trump started a war that no one supports and that has no end in sight. If Republicans think that attacking trans people is a brilliant distraction from all of Trump’s baggage, they should ask Earle-Sears how that worked out for her.