Trans people have been fleeing red states. What about those who stay?

Kae Petrin

Oct 19, 2026

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Trans people are leaving Republican-led states because of anti-trans laws, according to multiple surveys from the last few years. Federal data on trans communities is scarce, which means that researchers on LGBTQIA+ communities design surveys to capture numbers that aren’t documented elsewhere. These surveys provide crucial information on those who respond—but do not represent every trans person. The uncertainty matters as cities like Seattle struggle to determine how best to resource social services.

While exactly how many trans people have left red states remains unclear, the focus on those who move can obscure the people who want to move but can’t afford to, or those who choose to stay and fight for change within their communities.

The origin of the numbers

Since 2022, at least 10 states have imposed new misdemeanor or felony penalties to target trans communities amid a larger barrage of anti-LGBTQIA+ laws. Research consistently shows that these prejudicial laws lead to higher rates of suicidality and worse health and well-being for trans people.

In response many trans people are moving away, a trend that has been covered by dozens of local and national news outlets. But quantifying the scale of the exodus is trickier. The U.S. mostly captures population change and intra-migration through federal datasets that do not ask about LGBTQIA+ identity. This means that researchers focused on LGBTQIA+ communities gather information on a more case-by-case basis, often through surveys. Surveys can shed light on topics that aren’t otherwise tracked; they can also be quicker to conduct and release than a more complex study. At the same time, survey methods, sample sizes, and recruitment processes can vary wildly.

One widely circulated estimate claims that 400,000 trans people have moved since the 2024 election. The figure—published in The Washington Post and other outlets and repeated by LGBTQIA+ advocacy organizations—was extrapolated from a Movement Advancement Project (MAP) survey.

Except that number isn’t anywhere in MAP’s report.

“On the technical level, that statistic—the 400,000 people—that’s not something that you’ll find in our report, and it’s not something I would recommend using,” said MAP’s Director of Policy Research Logan Casey. “That’s why it’s not in the report.”

What does the actual report say? That 9% of the 111 transgender respondents have moved to a different state in response to LGBTQIA+-related laws or politics, out of a larger sample of more than 1,000 LGBTQIA+ adults.

Researchers at MAP collaborated with the research organization NORC at the University of Chicago to select LGBTQIA+ adults from “a probability-based panel designed to be representative of the U.S. household population.” Small subgroups of trans respondents within a survey limit how precisely the findings can describe all trans people nationwide.

Casey worries that focus on the question of how many trans people have moved out of state glosses over more urgent realities.

“Whatever the actual number may or may not be is less important than the fact that politicians are forcing queer trans people and their families to ask these very questions and make these decisions,” Casey said.

What we do know

There is no way to definitively calculate the behavior of the country’s 2.1 million trans adults based on responses from a very small-scale survey. But researchers still have documented important trends.

Across several surveys over multiple years, there are consistent findings: Trans people are moving. Many more want to move, but can’t.

The U.S. Trans Survey (USTS), the largest survey devoted to the lives and experiences of transgender people across the United States, provides one of the earliest data points on this topic.

The latest survey was conducted with more than 92,000 trans people in fall 2022, prior to MAP’s 2025 work and the 2023 surge in anti-trans legislation. Even then, 1 in every 20 surveyed people said they had already moved because their state government considered or passed laws that target transgender people. Nearly half of respondents said they wanted to move. Among trans people who reported moving due to discrimination or anti-trans laws, most left Republican-led states in the South such as Alabama, Florida, and Texas.

“We can’t speak broadly about trans people and who’s leaving where,” said Ankit Rastogi, who analyzes the survey data as Director of Research at Advocates for Trans Equality. The organization has conducted the survey since its first iteration in 2008 under a different name.

The survey offers a window into the experiences of thousands of trans and nonbinary teens and adults. Like any survey, it has limitations: some people are more likely to respond than others.

Carefully designed smaller samples sometimes better represent nationwide trends. Large samples often under- or over-represent groups.

For example, research shows that online surveys such as the USTS often over-represent younger, educated white people, which the 2015 USTS found consistent with its own responses. For its 2022 collection, USTS built an outreach council of partners to help reach those who have been underrepresented in past data collection, including Black and Latine communities, immigrants, and older adults.

Rastogi said their team continues to analyze the USTS data, and more detailed conclusions are forthcoming.

The LGBTQIA+ suicide prevention organization Trevor Project reached similar conclusions when it surveyed LGBTQIA+ youth in late 2023. The nonprofit found strong overlap between state policy and overall well-being, as well as some trans people who reported moving due to anti-LGBTQIA+ laws or policies.

A post-election survey by the Williams Institute, a UCLA Law think tank, found an even higher rate of trans people who moved. Of 302 trans and nonbinary people surveyed, 23% of respondents reported that they had already moved to a more trans-affirming state. Forty-five percent said they wanted to move.

“We can see it as an index of how fearful and desperate and unsafe people feel—and uncertain about the future,” said Abbie Goldberg, distinguished visiting scholar at the Williams Institute and the survey’s lead author.

To Goldberg, the findings are extremely concerning. But at the same time, the narrative that everyone is fleeing can make people feel “disempowered,” she said, or question whether they are making the right decision in choosing to stay.

The Williams Institute survey found that among the respondents who wanted to move somewhere safer, the vast majority reported significant financial and practical barriers to moving.

None of these surveys offer a definitive window into the demographics of trans people who have already moved. The Williams Institute survey, for instance, reached participants who care about these topics, volunteered their time, and felt safe enough to provide information to researchers, but likely missed those who are already unhoused, Goldberg said.

But historical scholarship on phenomena such as the Reverse Great Migration of Black professionals back to the South has found that those who move states tend to be younger, college-educated, and higher-income—a finding Rastogi said is common in other research studies on people who move.

Why better data is needed

In part, researchers such as Casey, Rastogi, and Goldberg are asking questions that can’t be answered through other avenues. Few federal datasets report LGBTQIA+ identity, and the Trump administration has temporarily removed, altered, or withheld some of them. This means that survey data from independent organizations is essential to understanding LGBTQIA+ experience in the U.S.

Our data allows our community to present evidence-based arguments for what our community needs. Without data, we don’t have that firm evidence on which to base arguments.

Ankit Rastogi, Advocates for Trans Equality Director of Research

“USTS was started because we did not have empirical evidence on the lives of trans people,” said Rastogi. “Our data allows our community to present evidence-based arguments for what our community needs. Without data, we don’t have that firm evidence on which to base arguments.”

In the Williams Institute study, when asked where they would move, trans people often named California, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New York, and Washington. Many said, “Anywhere blue.”

States such as Minnesota, Colorado, Washington, and Illinois have positioned themselves as sanctuaries for trans people fleeing hostile legislators. At the same time, LGBTQIA+ organizations and public officials now have growing financial needs. Transplants—especially to higher-cost urban areas in Democrat-led states—face increased costs of living, often with fewer resources and a smaller support network. Discrimination against transgender people is still widespread, including in states with protective laws. Federal action has left many cities with budget holes, leading to proposed budget cuts for LGBTQIA+ services even in Democrat-led cities.

Washington has a long track record of passing laws that protect LGBTQIA+ people and recently strengthened its Shield Law to limit out-of-state prosecution of people seeking medical care that is banned in other states, including gender-affirming care.

But LGBTQIA+ organizations in Seattle recently publicly pleaded for increased funding to support trans people leaving red states. Traction, a trans-led community organization that supports people moving to Seattle, told media outlets that requests for assistance skyrocketed from 70 to 1,500 in the months after the November election.

By some measures, Seattle is less expensive than San Francisco and New York. At the same time, a disproportionate number of those unhoused in Seattle are trans, and the cost of living has soared over the last decade.

The Seattle-based trans advocacy organization Gender Justice League attempted to estimate the number of new arrivals to make a numbers-based case that nonprofit services needed more resources. The organization combined a mixture of surveys and estimates. Its report referenced the 400,000 extrapolation based on MAP’s report, but underscored that its authors needed to do patchwork analysis because of a lack of data on trans communities.

After local pressure and national attention, Seattle’s City Council approved $300,000 in funding to distribute to multiple LGBTQIA+ organizations.

The people who’ve stayed

The focus on trans people moving to Democrat-led states often overshadows the reality of trans people who remain in Republican-led states in the South.

USTS respondents reported leaving this region of the country at the highest rates, but, according to Rastogi, they remain “states that people have social ties to and are deeply connected in.”

Drag performer Maxi Glamour’s story reflects this complexity. They have studied in San Francisco and Switzerland and traveled all over the country. Ultimately, they decided to move back home to St. Louis because they missed the city’s Black culture, politically engaged queer community, affordable living—and the thunderstorms.

“For me, I stay because I think that there’s potential to not detach ourselves from the rest of the country, not to look at it and self-pity, but to be inspired by what other cities are doing,” they said. “Coming back to St. Louis [was] recognizing how much we deserve that.”

Missouri over the last decade has gradually shifted from a swing state to GOP-controlled. Meanwhile, a vibrant trans community has grown in St. Louis, a blue dot that has a network of trans-focused community organizations. Still, the city has seen dramatic population decline, and Glamour said they know many people who have moved to nearby towns in southern Illinois.

Glamour has testified against anti-trans bills and is an active voice in St. Louis’ trans community. In 2021, they co-founded the Trans Housing Initiative St. Louis, which fights racial injustice and housing inequity.

In 2024, Glamour was elected to represent St. Louis’ 3rd Ward as a Democratic Central committeeperson. They serve as a liaison between the community and the Democratic Party in St. Louis. Through this role, they push the Democratic Party to support candidates with more liberatory values.

“You need to be able to take control of your life, and if you don’t like your surroundings, you can change them by either fighting to change them, bringing people together—or just moving,” said Glamour. “There are so many possibilities.”

The data reflects these possibilities.

In the same MAP survey that found 9% of surveyed trans people moved after the 2024 election, there’s a less-mentioned finding: widespread political advocacy and community engagement where people already live.

People should move if they want to move. But if they want to stay, they should fight.

Maxi Glamour, Drag performer and St. Louis’ 3rd Ward Democratic Central committeeperson

Forty-two percent of transgender and nonbinary people began participating in advocacy and activism since the 2024 election. Thirty-eight percent joined a new recreational or community activity. Thirty-one percent became more visible at work or school.

“There’s plenty of beautiful things and rich community that happens in even the reddest of red states, in the most rural places,” said Casey, who is trans and also lives in Missouri. “And in the bluest of blue states and what seem to be the safest places, really terrible things can happen too.”

Glamour pointed to canvassing, mutual aid, and nonprofit boards as just a few of the ways that they have gotten involved—and that others can, too, if they want to help change the environment around them.

“People should move if they want to move,” Glamour said. “But if they want to stay, they should fight.”

Editorial Team:
Tina Vasquez, Lead Editor
Carolyn Copeland, Top Editor
Rashmee Kumar, Copy Editor