FEW THINGS get Donald Trump more excited than talking about transgender issues. As he delivers his closing argument to America, barely a speech or ad goes by without a mention of “illegal aliens” getting “taxpayer-funded surgery” or biological males competing in women’s sports. Most of it is inflammatory and hateful. Some of it is clearly untrue, such as his claims that children are returning from school with sex changes, or his running-mate, J.D. Vance, suggesting this week that teens are “becoming trans” to get into Ivy League colleges. But some of it is not.

When asked recently how he would address the sports situation, Mr Trump said this was “such an easy question”: he would simply ban it. That brought loud cheers from the all-female Fox audience. It is a message Republicans are emphasising up and down the ballot. Recent polling by YouGov shows that Trump supporters have higher awareness of the former president’s policy on women’s sports than of his policy on abortion. In his final days of campaigning, Mr Trump is spending more on ads that attack Kamala Harris’s support for transgender rights than on any other subject, according to Politico.

It is easy to see why. Most Americans favour basic protections for transgender people—against hate speech, for example, or discrimination at work—and believe transgender people should be treated with respect (see chart). Yet most agree with Mr Trump that some policies and practices, however rare, have gone too far. Only 19% of Americans, including 33% of Democrats, support the idea of trans athletes playing on the sports team that matches their gender identity rather than their biological sex, according to YouGov. Indeed 25 states now require transgender students to participate in sports based on their natal sex, for reasons of both safety and fairness. Only 30% of Americans believe prisons should be required to house transgender inmates according to their gender identity. And just 19% believe transgender youths should have access to puberty-blocking medication (27% are unsure and 54% are opposed).

All of these policies are associated with Democrats, either because they supported them in the past or because they have failed to acknowledge some of the practical tensions that come with slogans like “transwomen are women”. During her presidential campaign, Ms Harris’s strategy has been to avoid the T-word at all costs, pivoting instead to the safer ground of same-sex marriage or women’s reproductive rights. Whereas the Republican Party’s convention was full of (inflammatory) references to threats posed by trans people, including some remarks by Mr Trump’s two eldest sons, only two speakers at the Democratic convention mentioned trans people, neither of them in a primetime slot.

Ms Harris’s silence has left space for Mr Trump to fill with footage of her previous commitments (eg, to trans prisoners being able to get gender-affirming treatments) and with claims that, as a popular Republican ad concludes, “Crazy liberal Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you.” It seems to be resonating. According to new polling by The Economist/YouGov, despite her vow of silence, some 36% of Americans think Ms Harris talks about trans issues too much, compared with 23% who say the same about Mr Trump.

But will it matter?

Republicans hope that outrage over what Mr Trump calls “trans insanity” will be their version of what abortion has done for Democrats, but there is a crucial difference. Whereas many Americans say abortion is a leading reason to vote, few say the same about trans issues. Polling shows that social issues in general feature low on Trump voters’ priority list, and within social issues transgender health care (albeit an imperfect proxy) sits at the very bottom. Mr Trump’s lines clearly play well with his base, and are a sure-fire way of getting a rally audience to its feet, but there is little evidence that this specific issue will recruit many new voters (though Republican strategists claim it can help swing undecided voters, who could prove crucial).

Only Ms Harris knows whether her recent silence is just a ruse until she is elected or whether she has genuinely moderated her stance. If elected, one opportunity to show herself as more in touch with the electorate will come when her administration deals with the most controversial part of Title IX anti-discrimination protections that the Biden administration kicked down the road: how to deal with women’s sports. By then she might be ready to agree with her opponent on one matter: it is an easy question. ■