WASHINGTON – Today, the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the nation’s largest lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) civil rights organization, released the following statement regarding Donald Trump’s win in New Hampshire tonight:

“Donald Trump has pandered his way to the top of the field by opposing the most basic protections for LGBT people and supporting Kim Davis-style discrimination against LGBT people,” said Human Rights Campaign President Chad Griffin. “What’s more, despite being married three times himself, this is a candidate who says he looks forward to appointing justices who would overturn marriage equality for loving same-sex couples. Donald Trump’s calculated efforts to use division, fear and bigotry to score political points is as dangerous as it is vile. Hillary Clinton is the candidate we can count on to defeat Trump -- or whichever one of these backwards anti-LGBT candidates emerges as the Republican nominee.”

Trump recently pledged on Fox New Sunday that, if elected, he would appoint justices who would reverse the landmark Supreme Court decision establishing marriage equality nationwide.

Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) has reported that a 75 percent majority of New Hampshire residents support the right of same-sex couples to marry. Nationally, polling by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner for HRC has found that a 55 percent majority of voters are less likely to support a candidate for president who opposes allowing same-sex couples to marry.

With 1.5 million members and supporters nationwide -- is planning an unprecedented organizational effort to register and mobilize the nation’s pro-equality majority and elect pro-LGBT candidates up and down the ballot. In 2016, HRC expects that the pro-equality vote will be larger, stronger, and more energized than at any point in history. Exit polls show that in 2012 at least six million LGB Americans voted in an election decided by less than five million votes.

Today, in key states like Ohio, North Carolina, and Florida, the population of LGBT adults is greater than the average margin of victory in the last three presidential elections.

The Human Rights Campaign is America’s largest civil rights organization working to achieve lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender equality. HRC envisions a world where LGBT people are embraced as full members of society at home, at work and in every community.

Paid for by Human Rights Campaign PAC and not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee.