Contested terrain: How attitudes toward gender issues relate to voting behavior

Abstract While research increasingly links sexist attitudes to far-right support, public debates have moved well beyond women’s equality to encompass LGBTIQ+ rights. Yet studies have been slow to follow, leaving a significant gap in our understanding of attitudes toward trans, intersex, and non-binary people and how they associate with party choice, especially beyond far-right support. Drawing on original data from the German Social Cohesion Panel (2022/23), we are, to our knowledge, among the first to investigate a broader range of gender-related attitudes and find, first, that these constitute two empirically distinct dimensions, binary and non-heteronormative gender issues , that while conceptually intertwined, warrant separate examination. Second, while support for binary gender issues is widespread, non-heteronormative issues remain highly contested. Third, these dimensions relate differently to vote choice: attitudes toward binary gender issues show partisan sorting across the left-right spectrum, while attitudes toward non-heteronormative gender issues reveal a specific antagonism between the Greens and (center-)right parties. Finally, considering both dimensions together uncovers an asymmetry: voters of (center-)right parties form a cohesive conservative bloc, while supportive voters with different attitudinal profiles disperse across (center-)left parties.