A majority of American voters believe transgender individuals should be allowed to serve in the U.S. military, according to a Quinnipiac poll released Thursday.
Sixty-seven percent of registered voters surveyed said transgender individuals should be allowed to serve in the military, while 27 percent said they should not.
That trend persisted in military households, where 55 percent of respondents were in favor of letting transgender individuals serve, while 39 percent opposed the policy.
Republican voters were the only demographic where a majority of respondents — 60 percent — opposed letting transgender individuals serve, while 32 percent were in favor.
In late July, President Donald Trump announced in a series of tweets that the U.S. government would not “accept or allow” transgender individuals to serve in the military “in any capacity.”
The Pentagon appeared to have been unaware of the policy before Trump announced it to his Twitter followers, and first daughter Ivanka Trump was reportedly “blindsided” by the announcement.
Amid questions about what Trump’s announcement would mean for transgender individuals currently on active service, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff told top military officers that no policy changes would be made until Trump’s policy went through the legally mandated chain of command.
Asked last week whether such questions about the potential major policy change should have been answered before Trump announced it, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the President “didn’t feel it was necessary” to wait.
The head of the Coast Guard on Wednesday reached out to all 13 openly transgender Coast Guard personnel and pledged to “not break faith” with them.
The Quinnipiac poll was conducted by landline and cell phone from July 27–Aug. 1 among a national sample of 1,125 voters, and had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.4 percentage points.
