probability RDD
Marist Poll
NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist Poll - Transgender Rights · Apr 7–13, 2021 · US national
Methodology
- Pollster
- Marist Poll academic
- Sponsor
- NPR and PBS NewsHour
- Commissioned by
- NPR/PBS NewsHour
- Fielded
- Apr 7–13, 2021
- Population
- adults
- Sample size
- 1,266
- Sample frame
- probability RDD
- Mode
- telephone - landline and mobile, live interviewers; mobile numbers randomly selected from a list of telephone exchanges nationwide from Dynata, supplemented by random dialing of landline numbers with within-household random selection; data collection assistance from Luce Research
- Margin of error
- +/- 3.3 percentage points
- Weighting
- samples combined and balanced to reflect the 2017 American Community Survey 1-year estimates for age, gender, income, race, and region
- Geography
- US national
- Base notes
- 1,066 registered voters, MoE +/- 3.5 percentage points
Sources
Verification note. Two items (know-anyone-transgender and high-school sports) plus the state-legislature-bills item are transcribed VERBATIM with party breaks from the AEI Polling Report, June 2021 (Karlyn Bowman, senior editor), which sourced them from the Roper Center iPoll databank. The remaining items are taken from Marist's own release page, which paraphrases rather than quotes, and are flagged as not verbatim. Marist's topline PDF for this wave was not linked on the release page. NOTE the split within this single poll: the direct 'should transgender students be allowed to play' item splits 47-48, while the 'bill that prohibits' item on the same sample splits 28-67 - a wording effect of roughly 40 points. || Equality Act and school-sports items read from the Marist release page; wording for the three state-restriction items (66%/65%/67% opposed) was not printed on the retrieved page and those results are therefore not recorded here || Equality Act, school-sports and contact items read from the Marist release page and PBS NewsHour's write-up. The Marist topline PDF was not retrieved, so wordings for the state-restriction items are paraphrases. NOTE: PBS reported the youth-medical-care ban result as '26% support' for BOTH Republicans and Democrats, which is almost certainly a transcription error in the write-up; those two rows are recorded as published but should be re-verified against the Marist topline before use. || WORDING RECOVERY SWEEP. Every stem and every percentage below was read out of the Marist-published banner-book XLSX (sheet 'Asked of National Adults'). The database previously carried PBS NewsHour and Marist-release paraphrases for all of these items, none of which reproduced the 'Several state legislatures have proposed bills affecting the transgender community' preamble or the Equality Act preamble.
Figures below are transcribed from these documents. Where they disagree with the source, the source governs.
Questions asked (18)
personally knowing anyone transgender, including oneself
Do you personally know anyone, including yourself, who is transgender, or not?
Wording notes: includes the respondent themselves in the contact measure, which inflates it slightly relative to know-someone-else items | party pattern is non-monotonic: independents (61%) report more contact than Democrats (53%)
neutral — factual contact item
Subgroup figures (6)
transgender students on high school teams matching gender identity
Do you think transgender students should or should not be allowed to play on sports teams that match their gender identity in high school?
Should not
48%
Should
47%
Vol: Unsure
5%
Wording notes: asked separately for grade school, middle school, high school and college on the same sample | no third option offered
neutral — balanced should/should not construction with the policy stated plainly
Subgroup figures (6)
bills prohibiting transgender student athletes from teams matching gender identity
Several state legislatures have proposed bills affecting the transgender community.
Several state legislatures have proposed bills affecting the transgender community. Do you support or oppose a bill that prohibits transgender student athletes from joining sports teams that match their gender identity?
Wording notes: preamble frames the policy as one of a wave of 'bills affecting the transgender community', which cues a civil-liberties rather than a fairness-in-sport reading | party differences almost vanish on this item (Dem 25, Rep 29, Ind 28 support) even though the same sample splits 75/17 by party on the directly worded sports item - strong evidence the preamble, not the policy, is driving the response
tilts_affirming — the 'bills affecting the transgender community' preamble bundles the sports restriction with a broader legislative campaign against a named minority, shifting the item from a fairness frame to a discrimination frame; the collapse of partisan structure relative to the neutrally worded item on the same sample is the tell
Subgroup figures (6)
transgender students on teams matching gender identity, by level of schooling
Do you think transgender students should or should not be allowed to play on sports teams that match their gender identity in grade school? [asked separately for middle school, high school and college]
Wording reconstructed from: Marist release page summary; the high-school version of this item is confirmed verbatim via the AEI Polling Report, and the other levels are described by Marist as identical apart from the level named
Should be allowed 195%184% Should not be allowed
Wording notes: four-level series on one sample producing a remarkably flat gradient (47-50% allow across all levels)
neutral — balanced construction; the flat gradient suggests respondents answered the category rather than the age-specific case
support for the 2021 Equality Act
Do you support or oppose the 2021 Equality Act?
Wording reconstructed from: Marist release page summary; the item almost certainly carried an explanatory preamble that the release does not reproduce
Wording notes: names a bill by title; support for named bills is sensitive to whether the contents are described
unclear — without the preamble it is impossible to tell whether respondents were told what the Act does; bill-title items commonly measure partisan cue-taking rather than policy preference
Subgroup figures (8)
state laws prohibiting or criminalizing gender transition medical care for minors
Several state legislatures have proposed bills affecting the transgender community.
Do you support or oppose a bill that prohibits gender transition-related medical care for minors? [and, separately, a bill that makes it a crime to provide such care]
Wording reconstructed from: Marist release page summary, which reports only the opposition shares; exact stems not published on the release page
Wording notes: shares the 'bills affecting the transgender community' preamble with the sports-ban item, so the same framing caveat applies
tilts_affirming — same preamble effect as the sports-ban item; opposition figures from this battery run far above what differently framed youth-medical items produce
trans students on teams matching gender identity, asked separately by school level
Should transgender students be allowed to play on sports teams that match their gender identity?
Should be allowed 195%184% Should not be allowed
Wording notes: repeated across four school levels, allowing an age-graded reading
neutral — plain should/should not stem
Subgroup figures (2)
state bills banning trans students from teams matching gender identity
Do you favor or oppose a law in your state that would prohibit transgender students from playing on the sports team that matches their gender identity?
Wording reconstructed from: paraphrase from PBS NewsHour's write-up of the April 2021 Marist release; Marist topline not retrieved
Wording notes: asks about a state bill rather than about the underlying behaviour, producing markedly lower support than the direct participation items in the same poll
unclear — wording not verified against the pollster's topline
state laws banning gender-transition medical care for minors
Do you favor or oppose a law in your state that would ban gender-transition-related medical care for people under the age of 18?
Wording reconstructed from: paraphrase from PBS NewsHour's write-up; Marist topline not retrieved
unclear — wording not verified
criminalizing providers of gender-transition care for minors
Do you favor or oppose a law in your state that would make it a crime for a health care provider to give gender-transition-related medical care to someone under the age of 18?
Wording reconstructed from: paraphrase from PBS NewsHour's write-up; Marist topline not retrieved
Wording notes: 'crime' framing produces lower support than the plain 'ban' framing in the same poll
unclear — wording not verified
Subgroup figures (2)
knowing a transgender person
Do you personally know someone who is transgender?
Wording reconstructed from: paraphrase from PBS NewsHour's write-up; Marist topline not retrieved
Wording notes: independents report the highest contact rate (61%), higher than either party - an unusual pattern worth checking against the topline
unclear — wording not verified
Subgroup figures (3)
2021 Equality Act
Existing civil rights laws currently protect people from discrimination in the areas of housing, employment, and public accommodation based on race, sex, religion, and other characteristics. The 2021 Equality Act would add sexual orientation and gender identity to these laws. Do you support or oppose the 2021 Equality Act?
Wording notes: carries a two-sentence explanatory preamble describing current law | describes the Act's effect before asking for an opinion
tilts_affirming — the stem supplies an informative, one-sided framing (existing protections plus what the Act would add) with no counter-argument, which reliably raises support relative to a bare label
Subgroup figures (6)
state bill barring trans student athletes
Several state legislatures have proposed bills affecting the transgender community.
Do you support or oppose a bill that prohibits transgender student athletes from joining sports teams that match their gender identity?
Wording notes: shared preamble naming state legislatures | restrictive policy is the 'support' pole
neutral — policy described plainly in both directions; the preamble is factual and applies identically to all three bill items
Subgroup figures (6)
state bill prohibiting gender transition-related medical care for minors
Several state legislatures have proposed bills affecting the transgender community.
Do you support or oppose a bill that prohibits gender transition-related medical care for minors?
Wording notes: shared preamble naming state legislatures | restrictive policy is the 'support' pole
neutral — policy described plainly in both directions
Subgroup figures (6)
state bill criminalizing provision of gender transition-related medical care to minors
Several state legislatures have proposed bills affecting the transgender community.
Do you support or oppose a bill that criminalizes providing gender transition-related medical care for minors?
Wording notes: shared preamble naming state legislatures | 'criminalizes' names the sanction explicitly
neutral — the contrast with TGSTBL1B is the point of the split: same policy, criminal penalty named
Subgroup figures (6)
trans students on teams matching gender identity - grade school
Do you think transgender students should or should not be allowed to play on sports teams that match their gender identity in grade school?
Should
50%
Should not
44%
Vol: Unsure
5%
Wording notes: asked separately for four school levels
neutral — symmetric should / should not construction
Subgroup figures (6)
trans students on teams matching gender identity - middle school
Do you think transgender students should or should not be allowed to play on sports teams that match their gender identity in middle school?
Should
49%
Should not
47%
Vol: Unsure
5%
Wording notes: asked separately for four school levels
neutral — symmetric should / should not construction
Subgroup figures (6)
trans students on teams matching gender identity - college
Do you think transgender students should or should not be allowed to play on sports teams that match their gender identity in college?
Should
49%
Should not
45%
Vol: Unsure
5%
Wording notes: asked separately for four school levels
neutral — symmetric should / should not construction
Subgroup figures (6)