About 2 to 3 in every 100 U.S. men identify as gay, and about 1 to 3 more identify as bisexual. Gallup's 2025 poll found 2.5% of adult men gay and 2.5% bisexual. CDC's National Survey of Family Growth found 2.2% gay and 2.1% bisexual among men ages 18 to 49 in 2011 to 2019.
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Who got counted when surveys asked men
Ask people to guess how many men are gay and the answer tends to come back high. When Gallup asked Americans in 2002, the average guess was 21% of men, and in 2019 adults guessed that 23.6% of all Americans are gay or lesbian.
The surveys that ask people about themselves land far lower. Who got counted? Gallup reached 13,454 adults by phone in 2025, CDC's family growth survey interviewed people ages 18 to 49 in their homes, and CDC's health interview survey covered adults of every age. Across all of them, the share of men who describe themselves as gay stays in the low single digits.
The surveys disagree most about bisexual identity. Across Gallup and the CDC surveys with a men's figure, men's shares run from 0.8% in the 2018 health interview survey to 2.5% in Gallup's 2025 poll, and women's figures in the same surveys spread wider still, from 1.8% to 7.2%.
Gay, lesbian, and bisexual shares of U.S. men and women by survey
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| Survey and question | Who was asked | Years | Men: gay / bisexual | Women: lesbian / bisexual | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gallup telephone poll | Adults 18 and over; people who declined stay in the base | 2025 | 2.5% / 2.5% | 2.3% / 7.2% | Gallup, February 2026 |
| NSFG, original wording | Women 18 to 49, random half of the sample | 2015 to 2019 cycle | Not published | 2.7% / 7.7% | CDC NSFG key statistics |
| NSFG, NHIS wording with a "something else" option | Women 18 to 49, the other random half | 2015 to 2019 cycle | Not published | 2.0% / 7.5% (3.6% something else) | CDC NSFG key statistics |
| NSFG, 2011 to 2019 pooled (one wording, then two) | Adults 18 to 49; "something else," don't know, and refusals left out | 2011 to 2019 | 2.2% / 2.1% | 2.0% / 7.0% | CDC NHSR 171, Table 1 |
| NHIS household interview | Adults 18 and over; shares of gay, straight, and bisexual answers | 2018 | 1.9% / 0.8% | 1.4% / 1.8% | CDC NHIS 2018, Table 1 |
| NHANES | Adults 18 to 59; "something else," don't know, and refusals left out | 2005 to 2018 | 2.6% / 1.3% | 1.4% / 4.5% | CDC NHSR 171, Table 1 |
| BRFSS state phone surveys | Adults 18 and over; states without the module modeled | 2020 to 2021 | Not split by sex; 5.5% of all adults LGBT | Not split by sex | Williams Institute, December 2023 |
Why do they differ? Question wording, age range, phone, household, or private computer answers, and who was left out all differ between these surveys.
How to read it: Percentages are rounded as each source published them.
Download the table (CSV) ↓Why one survey can give two answers
Question wording can move the number even inside a single survey. In its 2015 to 2019 survey cycle, CDC's National Survey of Family Growth asked a random half of respondents one wording and the other half a second wording. Among women ages 18 to 49, the survey's own wording found 2.7% lesbian and 7.7% bisexual, while the wording used by CDC's health interview survey found 2.0% and 7.5%.
The second wording offered a fourth answer, "something else," and 3.6% of women chose it. The straight share was 89.6% under the first wording and 86.9% under the second. CDC publishes this side-by-side view for women only, and we did not find the same split for men.
Other differences sit in who was in the room and how they answered. The family growth survey stops at age 49 and has people answer sensitive questions privately on a computer, while the health interview survey includes adults of every age in household interviews. Gallup's 2025 figures keep the 5% of adults who declined the question in the base, and several CDC tables leave out people who said "something else," didn't know, or refused. None of the reports measures how much each difference moves the count.
What percentage of women are lesbian or bisexual?
About 1% to 3% of U.S. women identify as lesbian, and about 2% to 8% identify as bisexual, depending on the survey. Gallup's 2025 poll found 2.3% lesbian and 7.2% bisexual among adult women, and CDC's 2018 health interview survey found 1.4% and 1.8%.
It's worth noticing how closely the bisexual share follows age for everyone, men and women together. Among all adults in the 2018 health interview survey, 2.3% of those ages 18 to 44 identified as bisexual, compared with 0.2% of those 65 and over. A survey that stops at 49 never meets the older groups where that share is smallest.
The difference between women and men is widest among young adults. Gallup found in 2024 that 31% of Gen Z women, then ages 18 to 27, identified as LGBTQ+, compared with 12% of Gen Z men, and most of those young women said they are bisexual. For how app choices look for women dating women, see dating apps for lesbians.
What percent of the population is gay?
About 3% of U.S. adults identify as gay or lesbian, and about 9% identify as LGBTQ+ in any form. Gallup's 2025 poll counted 1.6% gay and 1.4% lesbian, which adds to 3.0% by our arithmetic, along with 5.3% bisexual and 1.1% transgender. Gallup lets people give more than one identity, so those shares can overlap.
CDC's state phone surveys give a lower total. Pooling Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System data for 2020 and 2021, the Williams Institute at UCLA estimated that 5.5% of adults, about 13.9 million people, identify as LGBT. That label counts lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender adults, while Gallup's LGBTQ+ figure also takes in people who volunteer another identity, such as queer. CDC's 2018 health interview survey found 1.6% of adults gay or lesbian and 1.3% bisexual.
Zoom in by age and the shares change a great deal. In the Williams estimates, 15.2% of adults ages 18 to 24 identified as LGBT, compared with 2.7% of adults 50 to 64 and 1.8% of those 65 and older. Gallup's 2025 poll found 23% of adults under 30 identifying as LGBTQ+, most of them bisexual, and 3.1% of adults 50 to 64. More on how young adults date is in Gen Z dating statistics.
How many men are attracted to men?
About 8 or 9 in 100 men ages 18 to 49 report at least some attraction to men. In CDC's family growth survey for 2015 to 2019, 4.7% of men were attracted mostly to women, 1.1% equally to both, 0.8% mostly to men, and 1.9% only to men, which adds to 8.5% by our arithmetic.
Sexual experience runs higher than identity too. In 2017 to 2019, 7.3% of men ages 18 to 49 said they had ever had sexual contact with a man, and 3.2% had in the past 12 months. Among women of the same ages, 21.9% reported some attraction to women by our arithmetic, and about one in five reported sexual contact with a woman at some point.
Most of the distance between attraction and identity sits in the "mostly opposite sex" answer. A man who feels drawn mostly to women may still describe himself as straight and date women.
Picture 100 men by age and marital status
Picture 100 men ages 18 to 24 who follow CDC's family growth survey for 2011 to 2013, the newest CDC table we found that splits orientation by both sex and age. About 94 describe themselves as straight, 2 or 3 as gay, 2 or 3 as bisexual, and about 1 didn't answer.
Among men ages 25 to 34 the counts shift a little: about 95 straight, 1 or 2 gay, about 2 bisexual, and 1 without an answer. Among men 35 to 44 it's about 95 straight, 1 or 2 gay, about 1 bisexual, and 1 or 2 without an answer. Those small groups carry wide margins, so the differences between ages are loose.
Now take 100 men ages 18 to 44 who have never married and are not living with a partner, the group closest to a dating pool. About 92 are straight, 4 or 5 are gay, and 2 or 3 are bisexual. For a straight woman, about 94 or 95 of those men identify as straight or bisexual; for a gay man, about 7 identify as gay or bisexual.
Among never-married women the same ages, about 88 in 100 are straight, 3 lesbian, and 7 bisexual, so a woman dating women would find about 11 in 100 who identify as lesbian or bisexual. These counts are our arithmetic on the published percentages, from a survey taken more than a decade ago, and Gallup's newer polls show identification rising since then among younger adults.
Which number fits your own dating pool
For the question of who is in your pool, use the share of people who identify as straight, gay, lesbian, or bisexual. Identity is the answer people give about themselves, and it's the one measure all five surveys asked.
Treat attraction and sexual experience as an upper bound. They count everyone with any pull in a direction, including many people who call themselves straight, so they give the largest plausible share.
Then narrow by age, because age moves these shares in every source that reports it, and marital status matters too, as the share of U.S. men who are single shows. For couples already living together, same-sex couple household statistics count homes, which is a different measure from individual identity. How often those couples later part is another measure again, and the lesbian divorce rate covers what registers abroad and U.S. studies have counted.
The men's standards calculator and women's standards calculator estimate how many people in a place and an age range you choose match your filters for height, income, and relationship status. They do not filter by orientation, so apply the identity share yourself: multiply the count by the share for the group you date. For a gay man, about 7 in 100 never-married men ages 18 to 44 who were not living with a partner identified as gay or bisexual in 2011 to 2013, so a count of 10,000 unmarried men becomes about 700 by our arithmetic. Treat that as a rough adjustment, because the calculator's unmarried count also includes divorced, separated, and widowed men, and its age range is whatever you choose.
Orientation shares also differ by state. The Williams Institute estimates that 7.8% of Oregon adults identify as LGBT, the highest share among states, though a modeled one. The Oregon dating pool calculator shows that state's counts by age, height, and income before any orientation adjustment. Read the adjusted number as a picture of the crowd, not a forecast of who you'll meet.
Limits of these numbers
Some of the most detailed figures are old. The sex-by-age table is from 2011 to 2013, the health interview figures are from 2018, and CDC's newest published family growth orientation tables cover 2015 to 2019. We looked for a newer CDC table splitting men by both age and orientation and did not find one.
Every survey here counts what people chose to tell a survey, so none can count people who keep their orientation private. None can say anything about a particular person either, and orientation cannot be read from how someone looks. The Williams state figures rely on a survey module that some states did not use, so several state estimates, Oregon's among them, come from a statistical model.
Gallup is a private polling company, and its figures come from phone interviews with adults 18 and older. The CDC and Williams figures come from government surveys, several pooled over many years, so they describe an average across that stretch.
