GOP ads on transgender rights are dominating airwaves in the election's closing days

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Former President Donald Trump delivers remarks during a campaign rally in Atlanta on Oct. 15. With the election in its closing weeks, Trump and other Republican candidates have been focusing many of their campaign ads around the issue of transgender rights. / Getty Images

Voters consistently say issues like the economy and reproductive rights are their top concerns in this election. But in the closing weeks of the campaign, Republican ads focusing on transgender rights are dominating airwaves all over the country.

Consider the ad below from former President Donald Trump. If you've seen a Trump campaign ad lately, there's a good chance it's this one:

The Trump campaign has recently dropped at least $17 million on ads highlighting Vice President Harris' support during her 2019 presidential campaign for access to gender-affirming medical treatment for transgender people.

It's part of a broader Republican strategy casting the Democratic Party as taking transgender rights to extremes.

According to data compiled by AdImpact for NPR, these ads have aired more than 30,000 times, including in the key swing states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The campaign has placed a particular focus on NFL and college football broadcast audiences.

"I do think it's just emphasizing that sort of cultural divide that we do see in sport," said Jessica Taylor, a nonpartisan election analyst with the Cook Political Report. Taylor said the issue can appeal to men and swing suburban women, and polling backs that up.

Polling from the Marist Center for Sports Communication in 2022 found that 61% of Americans say transgender athletes should only be allowed to "play on teams that match their birth gender."

In extremely tight races where small shifts matter, divisive social issues can move the needle.

"If it moves a small sect of voters, that could still be key," Taylor said.

Anti-trans rhetoric is also being used down-ticket

Republicans are making similar bets in the House and Senate races that help determine control of the next Congress.

The Senate Leadership Fund, a super PAC affiliated with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, is bombarding Ohio with at least $15 million in ads attacking incumbent Sen. Sherrod Brown, a Democrat, on these very issues.

Brown responded with an ad of his own, calling the claims he voted to allow "biological men" in women's sports leagues a lie.

"The truth is in Ohio, this has already been banned and Sherrod Brown agrees with Gov. DeWine," the ad said. "These decisions should be made by local sports leagues, not politicians."

Trans-related ads are also targeting Democrats in at least eight competitive House races.

Kelley Robinson, president of the Human Rights Campaign, which advocates for LGBTQ rights, said that this slate of ads isn't anything new.

"When MAGA extremists are under attack and feeling like they're not going to win, they go to this old playbook of trying to sow fear and transphobia in our communities," Robinson said.

As for how Harris is responding to the ads, her campaign pointed NPR to comments spokesman Michael Tyler made last month on Fox News, where he said these issues are "not what she's proposing or running on."

Robinson is unbothered by the lack of Democratic response on the air.

"I'm not looking for them to kind of engage in the fearmongering," she said. "I'm looking for them to show that they're candidates that can pull this country together and that won't use divisiveness as a political tactic."

These ads are expected to remain on the air until Election Day.