Americans’ support for trans people participating in team sports with others of their gender has dropped, and that drop came mostly from Democrats, a new Gallup Poll found.

In 2021, 34% of American adults said that trans people should be allowed to play sports on a team that matched their gender, while 62% said that trans people should be forced to play sports on teams that match their sex assigned at birth.

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The new 2025 poll’s results have been released, and 69% now say that trans people should be forced to play sports on the team that matches their sex assigned at birth, and only 24% say that trans people should be allowed to play with others of their gender.

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Democrats were more supportive of transgender equality on this and other questions. 45% of Democrats said that trans people should be allowed to play sports with people of their gender, down from 55% in 2021. But the percent who said that trans people should be forced to play on teams matching their sex assigned at birth stayed the same at 41%, showing that this was mostly Democrats moving from the supportive answer to a “no opinion” answer.

Meanwhile, Republicans’ opinions were about the same over the four years.

At the beginning of 2021, just as President Joe Biden took office, no state had legislation banning transgender students from participating in school sports with others of their gender, although some state organizations that regulated school sports had varying requirements. Some states, like California, even had legislation on the books for years at that point that supported trans students’ right to an equal education, including sports education.

Now, in 2025, 27 states have legislation banning students from participating in school sports with people of their gender. The massive, national campaign to get those bills passed appears to have taken a toll on public opinion of transgender people and made at least a small percentage of Democrats more unsure about their support for equal rights for trans people.

When it came to the question of whether it’s morally acceptable to “change one’s gender,” Democrats were much more supportive (71%) compared to independents (45%) or Republicans (9%).

Americans were more likely to say that people are born gay or lesbian (45%) than transgender (30%).

Democrats were more likely to say that gay or lesbian people (74%) and transgender people (57%) are born that way compared to Republicans (21% and 9%, respectively).

The question also shows that, while there is debate among LGBTQ+ people about the importance of the “born that way” argument, belief that LGBTQ+ people are born queer or trans is correlated with higher support for equal rights.

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