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Sexuality and the city: The geography of LGBT political participation in the United States

The literature on LGBT participation is growing, but there is still little empirical analysis on the importance of urbanicity in shaping Queer activism. In this paper, we address this critical gap by examining how patterns of participation among LGBT Americans vary by geographic context. Using data from the 2020 Cooperative Election Study (CES) to explore how patterns of LGBT participation differ across the urban-rural interface, we find that individuals identifying as LGBT living in urban areas exhibit higher rates of participation than those living in rural areas, and that these results hold across multiple urban-rural classification schemes. Estimating a multilevel model that leverages local-level data on the density of the LGBT population, we also provide strong empirical validation of the theoretical effects of intragroup contact and mobilization on LGBT participation in large metro areas. When we limit our sample to respondents living in the 55 largest metro areas in the US but vary the metro-level percentage of LGBT individuals, we find that LGBT individuals living in metro areas with a higher percentage of LGBT individuals exhibit higher rates of participation relative to metro areas with a lower percentage of LGBT individuals. The results indicate that urban contexts foster Queer participation by engendering intragroup contact and mobilization among LGBT populations.