LGBTQ+ identification in the United States has spiked to 9.3 percent — an increase driven by Generation Z adults, a poll has found.
The percentage of U.S. adults who say they are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or something other than heterosexual has nearly doubled from 2020 and is up from a mere 3.5 percent in 2012, according to the Gallup survey.
“In the 12 years that Gallup has been tracking LGBTQ+ identification, it has nearly tripled, as those becoming adults during that period have been far more likely than their elders to say they are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender,” Gallup senior editor Jeffrey M. Jones wrote.
“The recent increase is largely due to more adults in their late teens, 20s and 30s — particularly young women — saying they are bisexual,” he added.
Gallup found that LGBTQ+ identification is increasing among younger generations of Americans entering adulthood. The survey reveals that nearly a quarter (23.1 percent) of Gen Z adults, those born between 1997 and 2006, say they are LGBTQ+.
“Each older generation of adults, from millennials to the Silent Generation, has successively lower rates of identification, down to 1.8% among the oldest Americans, those born before 1946,” Jones’ analysis detailed.
Among Millennials, those born between 1982 and 1996, 14.2 percent say they are LGBTQ+. Among Gen X, 5.1 percent say the same, followed by 3 percent of Baby Boomers.
According to the survey, Gen Z has a higher LGBTQ+ identification than other generations because “they are much more likely to consider themselves bisexual than are older people.” Nearly 6 in 10 (59 percent) of Gen Z adults who identify as LGBTQ+ say they are bisexual, as do 52 percent of LGBTQ+ Millennials. The share drops to 44 percent among LGBTQ+ Gen Xers, and accounts for less than 20 percent of LGBTQ+ Baby Boomers, and 11 percent of LGBTQ+ Silent Generation adults.
Among overall U.S. adults, 1.4 percent say they are lesbian, 2 percent say they are gay, 5.2 percent say they are bisexual, and 1.3 percent say they are transgender.
Among adults who identify as LGBTQ+, a whopping 56.3 percent say they are bisexual, 14.6 percent say they are lesbian, 21.1 percent say they are gay, and 13.9 percent say they are transgender. Nearly 4 percent of LGBTQ+ respondents say they are “other,” while 1 percent identify as pansexual and 1.2 percent say they are asexual.
Gallup additionally found that LGBTQ+ identification differs by sex, political orientation, and urbanicity.
“Whether due to political sorting or something else,” Democrats (14 percent) and independents (11 percent) are more likely than Republicans (3 percent) to identify as LGBTQ+, Jones wrote.
By ideologies, the difference is even more stark, with 21 percent of liberals saying they are LGBTQ+ compared to 8 percent of moderates and 3 percent of conservatives.
By sex, 10 percent of women versus 6 percent of men identify as LGBTQ+, a difference mostly caused by women being more likely than men to identify as bisexual, the survey found.
The gap between the sexes is much more pronounced among Gen Z and Millennials: 31 percent of Gen Z women versus 12 percent of Gen Z men identify as LGBTQ+, as do 18 percent of Millennial women and 9 percent of Millennial men. Most of those women say they are bisexual, according to the poll report.
Gallup found that people living in cities are more likely to identify as LGBTQ+ (11 percent) compared to people in the suburbs (10 percent) and rural areas (7 percent). College graduates (9 percent) and nongraduates (10 percent) are equally likely to identify as something other than heterosexual.
Jones assesses that the rates of LGBTQ+ identification are “likely to continue to grow, given the generational shifts underway.”
The survey was based on interviews with more than 14,000 U.S. adults across all 2024 Gallup telephone surveys.
Katherine Hamilton is a political reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow her on X @thekat_hamilton.