Voting as Revenge for “Second-Class Citizen Status”: How the American Queer Community Wields Electoral Power

A monologue by American journalist and activist Mark Segal on how, over the course of fifty years, the LGBTQ+ community in the United States went from outcasts to a force capable of rewriting electoral history. Doberman Media retells this text. The original publication is available by link on the website The Philadelphia Gay News.

Journalism has a golden rule: never bury the lead. So I’ll start with what matters most: in November’s congressional midterm elections, our community could become the deciding factor.

Right now, everyone is talking about a possible “blue wave” that could shift the balance of power in the U.S. Congress and create a real counterweight to President Donald Trump. But anyone who has been involved in politics for more than five minutes knows the old truth: in politics, even one week is a lifetime. Until the votes are counted, no one can guarantee anything.

Our Republican opponents understand this perfectly well. Fierce battles are raging across the country right now: electoral district boundaries are being redrawn, and the rules for early voting and voting by mail are being changed. All of this is being challenged in the courts and bogged down in state legislatures. But instead of simply complaining about someone else’s rules of the game, let’s ask an honest question: what role can we play in all this?

Many people have grown accustomed to thinking that we are too small a group to make a difference. The numbers show precisely the opposite. Here, I’ll allow myself to be a bit of a wonk and turn to the statistics.

Numbers That Can No Longer Be Ignored

For decades, LGBTQ+ voters have remained one of the Democratic Party’s most reliable electoral strongholds. Consider how the Democrats’ advantage within our community has changed over the past twenty years:

• 2004: the Democrats' advantage was +54% (77% voted for John Kerry at the time, while only 23% voted for George Bush).
• 2008: +43% за демократов.
• 2012: +54% again.
• 2016: the advantage increases to +64%.
• 2020: a decline to +37%.
• 2024: a colossal jump to +73%.

These figures did not move in a straight line, but the overall trend is clear: we remain an exceptionally reliable voting bloc. But something even more important has happened. We have grown as a share of the electorate.

While in 2004, national exit polls showed that gay, lesbian, and bisexual people accounted for only about 4% of all voters, by 2020, major national studies estimated that we made up roughly 7–8% of the entire electorate. Think about that. We don't just overwhelmingly vote for one party — there are significantly more of us physically showing up at the polls.

Electoral Math Made Simple

This brings us to the districts that will determine control of Congress. Most of the most competitive races will be won by razor-thin margins of just a few percentage points. We do not have detailed exit polls for every individual district—the samples there are too small—but we know for certain that our people are there.

We have already seen what this means in practice. Think back to the incredibly close 2020 presidential election. AP VoteCast data showed that LGBTQ+ voters overwhelmingly supported Joe Biden in the states that effectively determined the outcome of the entire race:

• Arizona: около 89% поддержки.
• Pennsylvania: 78%.
• Nevada: 73%.
• Wisconsin: 70%.

Simply put, in close elections, our votes decide everything. And that is precisely the part of the story that no one in our community should overlook.

From the Underground to the Ballot Box

I have devoted much of my life to fighting simply to give the LGBTQ+ community a voice in American politics. In 1976, I founded the newspaper Philadelphia Gay News. Back then, we literally fought just to get candidates to notice us. We fought to have our issues mentioned at all in party platforms. For years, we stood against laws that criminalized us and reduced us to second-class citizens.

Today, our community has something previous generations could only dream of—real electoral power.

But political power does not come from demographic statistics or attractive exit-poll charts. It only becomes real when we physically fill out and cast our ballots.

When November comes, it does not matter which particular candidates you personally support. Just remember these numbers. In an electoral district where the outcome is decided by a couple of percentage points, we do not need to be the majority to change the course of history.

We simply need to show up and vote. We spent generations fighting to win a seat at the table of American democracy. Now that we have that seat, it would be foolish not to use it.