Gay/Lesbian vote historically

[Thunderbird is the word]

Obviously there's probably very little information about how gay people might have voted prior to stonewall and gay issues even being on the table. Could there have been any biases in favor of one party or the other or would they likely have been divided on the same basis as the larger population with working class gays likely to vote Democrat and those in business likely to vote Repulican?

[Thunderbird is the word]

I also think it would be interesting to see the in the closet/out of the closet breakdown. Openly gay voters have probably always voted to the left, but I wouldn't be surprised if closeted gays were/are significantly farther to the right.

probably, I do know that Harvey Milk was originally a Republican. He may have been a "Goldwater/McGovern" voter.

[Thunderbird is the word]

I also think it would be interesting to see the in the closet/out of the closet breakdown. Openly gay voters have probably always voted to the left, but I wouldn't be surprised if closeted gays were/are significantly farther to the right.

That might be very hard to measure. Many closeted people might also be "closeted" while filling out surveys.

almost certainly

[Thunderbird is the word]

As best I can tell, the question didn't appear until 1992. It's possible that it was asked in the Voter News Service polls that were conducted during the mid-terms between 1994-2002 (and maybe even before that, if they provided them then), but you need a Roper Center membership in order to access those. Remarkably, or perhaps unremarkably, the gay vote has been relatively static for the past 20-something years.

1992: 72% Clinton
1996: 66% Clinton
2000: 71% Gore
2004: 77% Kerry
2006: 75% Democratic
2008: 70% Obama
2010: 69% Democratic
2012: 77% Obama
2014: 76% Democratic

Temporarily racist gays!?



Source: 1992 ( Page 8 )
Source: 1996
Source: 2000
Source: 2004-2012
Source: 2014

I wonder whats the demographic profile of those 30% of gays who vote for the GOP candidate. My guess is that some of it is trolling/checked the box by mistake. While the rest are probably either wealthy gays OR gays that are quite religious.

My guess is that most are fiscally conservative. While there are plenty of religious gay people most of them tend to be religiously liberal. I think that it's probably because a lot of gay people are small business owners and might have fiscally conservative or anti-regulation views for that reason might vote Republican, and be even more likely to at the state level vote for a socially liberal Charlie Baker or Neal Kashkari type.

[Thunderbird is the word]

So back to the topic, no one has any idea how LGBTs voted pre-1992?  I mean it's not like the Democratic Party has been the clearly more pro-LGBT party before about 2000 (which is the OP's point).

Still I think that the gay community tended to drift towards the Democrats by default beginning probably in the 70s just because they tended to be clustered in urban areas and would have been more likely to form pressure groups within the Democratic Party, Reagan's reaction to AIDS I think was the tipping point even if Democrats in the 80s were really just as bad.

I could see Ford possibly doing well in 76 just because Carter was the one perceived as a bible thumper and probably seen as less gay friendly at that point.