Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s campaign is launching Out for Biden, an LGBTQ voting initiative for Pride month, while President Donald Trump ignores the LGBTQ community and refuses to honor the historic events that propelled equality forward this month. Biden has an 8000 word policy plan on LGBTQ equality. He also issued a statement marking LGBTQ Pride Month on June 1. Trump has never issued a proclamation honoring LGBTQ Pride month, although last year he posted a tweet, managing to turn the month’s focus to himself.
“It is critical that, in this moment, as we speak out against racial injustice, discrimination, and harassment, we don’t forget to do everything we can to empower people,” U.S. Senator Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), the nation’s first openly lesbian Senator, said in a statement about the Biden campaign’s program, as CBS News reports. Baldwin is one of 32 LGBTQ politicians and allies spearheading the Out for Biden initiative.
“LGBTQ voters could be the margin of victory in Wisconsin, and in key states across the country,” she adds, noting the importance of her home state this year.
The Biden campaign “will target the estimated 11 million LGBTQ voters throughout the country, with a focus on racking up support in battleground states.”
While Biden is ahead by strong margins in the polls, it’s clear LGBTQ voters could make the difference between an Electoral College win or loss for the former Vice President. In 2016 Trump lost the popular vote by nearly 3 million to Hillary Clinton, but about 77,000 voters in three swing states handed him the Electoral College victory, and the Oval Office.
“About one fifth of LGBTQ adults aren’t registered to vote,” CBS notes, citing a 2019 study by UCLA School of Law’s Williams Institute. Only about half of registered LGBTQ voters are Democrats, and “are racially diverse and also tend to be younger.”
15 percent of registered LGBTQ voters are Republicans.
Biden Deputy National Press Secretary Matt Hill:
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