Analyzing LGBTQ+ Political Behavior in the UK Using New Demographic Measures

• In Event: LGBTQ Behavior and Representation

Abstract

LGBTQ+ people have been substantially underrepresented in political science research. One literature review suggests that less than 3% of published political science research on LGBTQ+ related issues involved actually interviewing or surveying an LGBTQ+ person. An effect of the lack of substantive representation in political science is that LGBTQ+ people are often presumed to be a part of a singular and cohesive political community. Mainly, LGBTQ+ people are assumed to be ideologically liberal or progressive, vote for left-leaning parties, and support progressive policies. Yet there is very little data to support these assumptions. Part of the underrepresentation of LGBTQ+ people in academic research stems from the lack of research on how to identify and code sexual and gendered minorities on surveys and in polls. When surveys and polls do include questions about diverse gender identity and sexuality, they often do not produce high-quality data because the questions reduce LGBTQ+ people to a singular identity or because the questions are offensively written. For example, the Understanding Society Survey asks respondents if they are either 1. Heterosexual, 2. LGB, or 3. Don’t know. Here, non-heterosexual identities are conflated as the same, reducing the quality of the data and its use for researchers. Questions on gender identity beyond a standard male/female or man/woman binary measure are rarely asked. When gender identity questions are asked, many trans, nonbinary, and gender-nonconforming people indicate that they would not respond because the question and response options are offensively written. Forthcoming research offers better measures of sexuality and gender identity that reduces LGBTQ+ non-response error and generates better quality data for researchers. I apply these measures in a YouGov UK survey to assess British LGBTQ+ political behavior.

The aims of this study are to: one, provide a picture LGBTQ+ political behavior in the UK using high quality and large-n data; and two, to examine whether sexuality and diverse gender identity form important explanatory variables in understanding political behavior in the UK (i.e., does marginalized gender identity and sexuality form a significant political cleavage). This research is significant because it marks one of the first times that British LGBTQ+ people are significantly represented in political science survey research in a way that does not reduce different sexual and gender identities as the same. This research also marks one of the first times that trans, nonbinary, and gender-nonconforming people are substantively included in political science survey research.

This research has important applications for broader studies of political behavior because it can indicate the extent to which LGBTQ+ identity helps explain variation in behavior. It also improves our understanding of the discipline’s understanding of an under researched group. This also builds on previous research by applying newly tested survey measures of gender identity and sexuality that has yet to be done.

Author

• Nate Roundy, University of Cambridge