Pew survey finds party affiliation, age determines whether someone correlates sex and gender

In a Pew Research Center survey published Tuesday, researchers found that a person's political affiliation has strong ties to whether a person determines someone's gender by their biological sex.

The study found that 81 percent of Republican or Republican-leaning respondents believe that gender is determined by biological sex, compared to 34 percent of Democrats or Democrat-leaning respondents.

In contrast, 63 percent of Democrats said that gender can be different than a person's biological sex, compared to just 17 percent of Republicans.

Overall, most adults responded that gender is determined by biological sex, at 56 percent.

Younger participants were more likely to not correlate the two, with 56 percent of those younger than 30 saying that gender was not tied to biological sex. Adults older than 30 all leaned towards saying biological sex and gender directly correlate.

Within Democrat respondents, 74 percent of white respondents and 64 percent of Hispanic respondents said that gender can be different than sex, while in contrast, 55 percent of black Democrats agreed with the opposite.

While Republicans as a whole are more likely to correlate gender and sex, younger Republicans are more likely than to state that gender and sex can be different, with 26 percent of those 18 to 29 and 19 percent of those 30 to 49 responding as such.

The center surveyed 10,606 US adults from June 14-27 through a random sampling of US residential addresses, with nearly all US adults having a chance at selection.