Ipsos

To what extent do you agree or disagree with the following statements?

To what extent do you agree or disagree with the following statements? Transgender girls should be allowed to participate in women's sports

Wording notes: wording is essentially identical to the 2022 and 2023 TM2062Y21_2 fieldings, but the sample frame changed from opt-in to KnowledgePanel - the trend is not mode-clean | category mismatch: 'transgender girls' (minors) into 'women's sports' (adult category)

neutral — Neutral construction with an explicit 'Don't know' that 14% took. Its real value is as one cell in a four-cell design: read alongside items _10, _11 and _12 it shows opposition is highest for elite women's leagues (65% disagree), next for trans girls generically (63%), lower for children's sports (55%) and lowest for trans boys in men's sports (54%).

To what extent do you agree or disagree with the following statements?

To what extent do you agree or disagree with the following statements? Transgender boys should be allowed to participate in men's sports

Wording notes: mirror item isolating direction of transition while holding everything else constant

neutral — The experimental value is high. Trans boys entering men's sports raises no competitive-advantage concern at all, yet 54% still disagree and 43% disagree strongly. That residual is the clearest available evidence within Ipsos's own data that objection to trans athletes is not fully explained by the fairness rationale.

To what extent do you agree or disagree with the following statements?

To what extent do you agree or disagree with the following statements? Transgender women should be allowed to complete in elite women's sports leagues (WNBA, NCAA, NWSL, Olympics, etc.).

Wording notes: names four specific elite leagues, which anchors the respondent on the highest-stakes competitive context | typographical error in the fielded stem ('complete' for 'compete')

neutral — Precisely specified and neutrally worded. Naming elite leagues is not loading - it is the manipulation the design depends on. This produces the highest opposition of the four cells (65% disagree, 54% strongly), which is the correct comparison point for the NYT/Ipsos unspecified-level item that produced 79%.

To what extent do you agree or disagree with the following statements?

To what extent do you agree or disagree with the following statements? Transgender athletes should be able to participate in children's sports (elementary/high school)

Wording notes: same wording as the July 2023 item TM3158BY23_3, but fielded on KnowledgePanel rather than the opt-in sample

neutral — Neutral and level-specified. Comparing to July 2023 on identical wording: agreement 32% then, 26% now; disagreement 52% then, 55% now - restrictive movement, though the mode change from opt-in to KnowledgePanel confounds the comparison.

To what extent do your support or oppose the following policies?

To what extent do your support or oppose the following policies? Banning transgender girls and women from participating in female sports events in schools and colleges

Wording notes: NO 'don't know' or 'not sure' option in this battery - unlike the agree/disagree sports items in the same questionnaire, which offered one and saw 14-16% take it | restrictive polarity: 'support' means supporting the ban | presented as an existing federal policy in the ExecOrder battery, which invokes partisan cue-taking | typographical error in the fielded stem

tilts_restrictive — The critical design fact is the missing don't-know. In the very same questionnaire, the agree/disagree sports items offered 'Don't know' and 14-16% used it; this battery does not, and support for the ban comes in at 63% against 63% disagreement with trans girls' inclusion on the item nearby. Forcing the undecided to choose, in a battery explicitly framed as administration policy, moves respondents toward the restrictive default. Comparisons between this item and the agree/disagree items should not be made without accounting for that.

To what extent do your support or oppose the following policies?

To what extent do your support or oppose the following policies? Requiring that transgender women prisoners serve their time in men's prisons

Wording notes: no 'don't know' offered | restrictive polarity | does not mention the documented safety consequences for trans women housed in men's facilities, which is the central contested fact

neutral — Plainly worded description of the policy EO 14168 actually directed, with a balanced four-point scale. It omits the safety argument, but it equally omits the safety argument on the other side, and the omission is symmetric. This is the single trans-restrictive policy in the battery that the public rejects - 42% support against 51% oppose - which makes it the most informative item in the set about where the restrictive coalition breaks down.

Below is a list of proposed or current policies of the federal government. Regardless of whether you support or oppose the policy, how much do each of the following policies you motivate you to vote in the next election?

Below is a list of proposed or current policies of the federal government. Regardless of whether you support or oppose the policy, how much do each of the following policies you motivate you to vote in the next election? Banning transgender girls and women from participating in female sports events in schools and colleges

Wording notes: the fielded stem is grammatically broken, which raises a genuine comprehension question about what respondents were answering | explicitly direction-neutral ('regardless of whether you support or oppose'), which is a design strength | 'Don't know' offered here, unlike the paired support/oppose battery

neutral — The direction-neutral framing is well designed and the item does what few others do - separates salience from position. Democrats and Republicans report similar overall motivation (48% vs 66% very/motivating) even though they take opposite positions, which is exactly the kind of finding this construction exists to surface. The broken grammar in the stem is a real data-quality caveat but is recorded rather than corrected.

Do you support or oppose each of the following? (Items a-d asked of one half sample, e-h asked of other half sample)

Do you support or oppose each of the following? Banning transgender people from serving in the military

Wording notes: the summary table publishes only a two-way Support/Oppose split plus 'No opinion/Skipped'; no strength-of-opinion breakdown is printed for this item | restrictive polarity | narrower than the Reuters/Ipsos version, which covered both 'enlisting and serving openly' - this asks only about serving | half-sample base

neutral — Terse and accurate description of the policy with a symmetric two-way choice and an explicit no-opinion escape. The battery is a mix of popular and unpopular administration actions, so it does not stack the deck. Note the convergence: two independent Ipsos-fielded instruments with different sponsors, different item wording and different scales both land trans military exclusion at 40-42% support and 53-55% opposition in February 2025.

(IF SUPPORT TRUMP) What do you think is the best thing Trump has done since entering office in January? (Open-end; responses grouped into categories)

Wording notes: asked only of respondents who said they support what Trump has done, so the base is supporters rather than all adults | the coding scheme merges DEI rollback, 'LGBT inclusions' and transgender policy into a single bucket, so the trans-specific share cannot be isolated

neutral — Unprompted open-end, which is the strongest available evidence about spontaneous salience - nothing in the question suggests transgender policy as an answer. The finding is that it is a minor spontaneous concern on both sides: 4% of Trump supporters named DEI/LGBT/transgender policy as the best thing he had done, and coincidentally 4% of opponents named it as the worst. Deportation and immigration dominated for supporters (33%), DOGE and funding cuts for opponents (24%).

(IF OPPOSE TRUMP) What do you think is the worst thing Trump has done since entering office in January? (Open-end; responses grouped into categories)

Wording notes: asked only of respondents who oppose what Trump has done | same merged DEI/LGBT/transgender coding category as Q9, so trans-specific mentions cannot be separated | 19% skipped the question

neutral — Unprompted open-end with no priming. Recorded alongside Q9 because the symmetry is the point: transgender policy registered at 4% spontaneously among both supporters and opponents in February 2025, well behind DOGE, immigration and tariffs on both sides. That is a useful counterweight to the closed-ended salience items, which force respondents to rate an issue they would not otherwise raise.