Methodology
- Pollster
- Rasmussen Reports commercial
- Sponsor
- Rasmussen Reports
- Fielded
- Jul 14–15, 2015
- Population
- likely voters
- Sample size
- 1,000
- Sample frame
- mixed-mode probability
- Mode
- national telephone and online survey; field work by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC
- Margin of error
- +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence
- Geography
- US national
Sources
Verification note. Question wording and methodology read from Rasmussen's own questions page for the July 14-15, 2015 survey; the article itself is behind Rasmussen's reader paywall. The two percentages come from the trend sentence in Rasmussen's July 28, 2017 release: 'When the Pentagon first announced that transgender individuals would be allowed to serve openly in the military two years ago, voters were closely divided: 45% approved of the policy change, but nearly as many (42%) were opposed.' The 2017 sentence says 'approved' where the 2015 item says 'favor', so the mapping of the two figures onto the published response labels is an inference and is flagged here rather than asserted silently. This is the earliest national transgender-military reading located for this project.
Figures below are transcribed from these documents. Where they disagree with the source, the source governs.
allowing transgender people to serve openly
The U.S. Defense Department is proposing to allow transgender people, those who identify with and want to live as the opposite sex, to serve openly in the military.
The U.S. Defense Department is proposing to allow transgender people, those who identify with and want to live as the opposite sex, to serve openly in the military. Do you favor or oppose allowing transgender people to serve openly in the military?
Wording notes: defines transgender people as 'those who identify with and want to live as the opposite sex', which frames identity as aspiration rather than fact and is Rasmussen's house definition across all four of these waves
loaded_terms — the definitional clause 'those who identify with and want to live as the opposite sex' does work that a neutral gloss would not: 'want to live as' casts transition as a wish rather than a status, and 'the opposite sex' presupposes the birth-sex classification the question is ultimately about