Civis Celebrates Pride (With Data, Of Course!)

In honor of Pride Month and celebrations across the country, we thought it would be fun to find out how Americans feel about some current LGBT topics and issues. From Pride participation to employment laws, there’s no shortage of topics we could cover. And look out for us at the DC or Chicago parades where we share that 84% of Americans support the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA).

Are you surprised that only 10% of Americans said they’d ever been to a Pride parade, with only 4% intending to go this year? We’ve participated in both Chicago and DC parades and we’re excited to bring more people with us this year.

What else did we find?

• 84% of Americans have met an LGBT person. While there are no major differences by age, slightly fewer men than women thought they’d met an LGBT person.
• 61% said they’d been friends with someone who was LGBT.
• 84% support the Employment Non-Discrimination Act. This bill would prevent employers from firing employees because of their sexual orientation or gender identity.
• Among Republicans, 79% support the ENDA, but only 67% of those who identify as very conservative do.
• Despite the strong support for the ENDA, only 5% of people said they’d campaigned or advocated for pro-LGBT policies.

We also decided to have a bit of fun by testing the popularity of LGBT celebrities. Of the public figures included on the survey, Ellen DeGeneres had the strongest favorables, with 53% of all respondents viewing her at least somewhat favorably, 62% among women. Elton John came in second, at 50% overall.

Very few respondents knew who Alan Turing was (only 26%, with 16% saying they were “neither favorable nor unfavorable” towards him, which is a pretty neutral response for such an awesome figure). He was a British mathematician and codebreaker, featured in the Oscar-winning film The Imitation Game, famous both for his work during WWII cracking the Enigma Machine and for proposing the Turing Test. Here at Civis, we’ve even got a conference room named after him!

We love using data and survey research to bring insights to everything we do, from work for our clients to occasions like Pride! Our methods let us quickly and easily answer burning questions, for fun and for business and we’re excited we can share some of our findings with you.

Have a wonderful Pride Month! (And consider googling Alan Turing!)