Yale Freshmen Who Identify as LGBTQ Outnumber Conservatives 2 to 1

LGBTQ students outnumber those who identify as conservative.

LGBTQ students at Yale are outpacing other demographics, survey finds | Photo by iStock

Yale University—the world-famous, blue-blooded, Ivy League alma mater of Brett Kavanaugh, Clarence Thomas, Gerald Ford, both Bushes and good old William Howard Taft—is becoming more diverse. According to a Yale Daily News survey, Class of 2022: By the Numbers, freshmen students who identify as LGBTQ outnumber those who identify as conservative. (It’s double the number, in fact.)

In a sample of 864 respondents, roughly half the class, 22 percent identified as LGBTQ and/or questioning or asexual/ace spectrum.

Eleven percent said that they were politically conservative. Almost 75 percent of respondents called themselves “very liberal” or “somewhat liberal,” while just over 16 percent said that they were centrist.

Interestingly, LGBTQ students in the survey also outpaced Protestants, Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Hindus and every other religious demographic except agnostics.

Introducing the results on the paper’s website, Yale Daily News reporters Isabel Bysiewicz and Britton O’Daly write:

“To learn more about the class of 2022, the News sent out a survey to the first years in August. The results offer insights into the opinions, interests and goals of the newest class of Bulldogs. Of the 1,578 new first years, 864 responded to the survey—a 54.75 percent response rate. Survey results were not adjusted for selection bias.

On Aug. 24, most members of Yale’s class of 2022 walked through University gates for the first time. The new first-year class set records for socioeconomic diversity and yield.”

Maybe so, but Yale still has a lot of work to do on the ethnic diversity front. The student population is overwhelmingly Caucasian and East Asian/Asian-American, while only 14 percent identify as Latinx and 9 percent identify as African/African-American. Those numbers are disappointing. Gender equality appears to be improving, though. Female respondents in the survey exceeded male respondents by 9 percentage points. Seven survey respondents identified as gender queer.


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