A week before Israel’s March election, 40-year-old chef Simon Barel decided it was finally time to come out. Again. Barel, who told his family and friends he was gay at age 12, revealed to a Facebook group for gay Israelis that he planned to vote for a far-right political party. The disclosure proved controversial, eliciting its fair share of the disgust and disapproval Barel had anticipated. But it was also met with support from a vocal minority. LGBT voters are often assumed to be overwhelmingly leftist, and research in various countries seems to confirm this. Gay and lesbian political preferences were first monitored in the United States via exit polls during the 1988 presidential primaries, and have remained solidly left-wing ever since. The Williams Institute published a study in October 2019, indicating that 50 percent of U.S. LGBT voters are registered as Democrats, compared to 15 percent registered as Republicans