Statement on 2026 Midterm Election Results from Shannon Minter, National Center for LGBTQ Rights Legal Director
For the past year, anyone paying attention to conversations about the midterm election heard the same prediction: candidates who refused to distance themselves from transgender people would pay for it in November. President Trump and his allies spent nearly $400 million on ads containing anti-transgender attacks, more than they spent on similar ads in 2024 and more than they spent on ads focused on any other issue.
The results are now in, and that theory is wrong.
James Talarico was the target of tens of millions of dollars in anti-transgender ads, more than any other candidate in the country, largely because he had voted against anti-transgender bills in the Texas legislature. He won his Senate race in a historic upset, becoming the first Democratic Texas senator in more than 30 years. In Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed was told repeatedly, including by members of his own party, that he needed to distance himself from transgender people to win. He didn’t, and yesterday he became the country’s first Muslim senator. In a suburban Huntsville district that anti-LGBTQ candidates had previously carried, Alabama voters just elected Allison Montgomery, a transgender woman, to their state legislature.
What is most notable is not that some candidates from last night survived anti-transgender attacks, but that none of them were hurt by them at all.
I don’t think the explanation is complicated. Most people have more pressing things to worry about than what name a transgender student uses or what kind of medical care a transgender adult gets from her doctor. They are worried about rent and groceries and whether anyone in government is fighting for them or working to solve the affordability crisis. A campaign that spends hundreds of millions of dollars on ads telling voters to fear a small group of their neighbors, rather than talking about what matters most to voters, is signaling something about its own priorities—and a lot of people got the message.
I want to be careful not to overstate what last night means for our community. Anti-transgender ballot measures passed in some states and are still too close to call in others. Those outcomes will hurt real families, and they are a reminder that a well-funded misinformation campaign can still do a great deal of damage even in a year like this one.
The National Center for LGBTQ Rights (NCLR) will challenge laws that violates our Constitution, as we have been doing for decades.
That is especially true for our work right now on behalf of transgender service members. The Trump administration has spent nearly two years trying to force thousands of them out of the military, highly decorated troops with combat deployments and long records of honorable service who have met every standard the military ever set for them. My colleagues and I at NCLR and GLAD Law represent many of them in Talbott v. United States, and that case will continue regardless of what happened yesterday. But yesterday still matters. The country they signed up to defend was asked whether it wanted a politics built on disrespecting and demeaning them, and Americans said no.
For elected officials in both parties, the takeaway should be a simple one. You were told that you had to choose between winning and supporting transgender people. You now have evidence, from across the country and paid for by the other side, that you never had to choose. The politics of division were on the ballot yesterday, and people across the country roundly rejected these, for messages instead focused on supporting our neighbors and communities.
