Beyond MAGA: The War Against Wokeness
Summary: In January, More in Common released the most comprehensive study to date of the Americans who voted for President Trump in November 2024. Beyond MAGA: A Profile of the Trump Coalition provides a detailed segmentation of these voters and their views on the major issues confronting our country and the world. This newsletter is part of a multi-part series on Beyond MAGA and examines one of the driving forces behind President Trump’s reelection: concerns about wokeness.
“Beyond MAGA” has been featured in Axios, USA Today, and The Atlantic, among others.
Learn more about the four types of Trump voters: MAGA Hardliners, Anti-Woke Conservatives, Mainline Republicans, and the Reluctant Right at beyondmaga.us.
Watch our short video about the Anti-Woke Conservatives (21% of Trump voters), the segment of Trump’s coalition most frustrated by the perceived takeover of our schools, culture, and institutions by the progressive left.
Introduction
“I’m noticing that a lot of the conservatives are not afraid to speak up anymore. During the last four years with Biden, we all kind of took a back seat, and we weren’t allowed to express ourselves for fear of being canceled or being outed or whatever.”
Raquel, Anti-Woke Conservative
Age 48 • White woman • Colorado Springs, Colorado
For its critics, “wokeness” has become an umbrella term for what they see as progressive cultural overreach—an attempt by a vocal minority to impose its values on the broader population. Frustration with initiatives ranging from Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs to transgender athletes in women’s sports has helped forge the Trump coalition.
The need to push back against wokeness has energized many Trump supporters, who see the president’s combative approach as meeting the moment. Yet not all Trump voters are energized by the culture wars and debates over race, gender, and identity. While some see these issues as fundamental threats to American values, for others, they are little more than background noise.
In Beyond MAGA, we examine how Trump voters understand “wokeness”: what it means to them, what threats they believe it poses, and the potential future of America’s culture wars.
Three Key Takeaways:
1. Widespread concern about “wokeness”
Trump voters vary in how deeply they are concerned about progressive cultural change, but opposition to “wokeness” is a powerful unifying force across the coalition. A large majority believe progressive cultural politics have gone too far and require correction.
Within the Trump coalition, these concerns range in intensity. Some believe America’s way of life faces an existential threat from a “woke agenda” that has captured major institutions and misled younger generations. Others who may not follow these issues closely report negative personal experience of excesses, connecting to issues such as gender education in schools, diversity mandates in the workplace, and ideological uniformity in universities.
Three findings illustrate the breadth of anti-woke sentiment in the Trump coalition:
79 percent of Trump voters believe “wokeness” is a problem in the United States today.
76 percent agree that “the woke left has ruined American education, news, and entertainment.”
69 percent believe that “President Trump should punish public universities if they promote ideas like DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) or CRT (Critical Race Theory) by withholding federal funding.”
2. "Wokeness" as a top-down moral imposition
While Trump voters are united in their opposition to “wokeness,” they have different definitions of what it means.
The harshest critics of “wokeness” describe it as an ideology whose proponents are both dogmatic and arrogant. MAGA Hardliners and Anti-Woke Conservatives use strong language to criticize what they perceive as an unreflective tendency to adopt the latest political or cultural trends. They sometimes label this behavior “virtue signaling,” viewing it as a performative display of moral standing rather than true conviction. In their view, those who decline to conform risk being shamed, shunned, or silenced.
“‘Woke’ is just the adherence to what the prevailing cause of the day is…It used to be that you were aware of the real things that are going on, but now it’s more of a pejorative that we use to refer to people who are virtue signaling to everybody else, and it’s to the point of absurdity where they embarrass themselves with the positions they take just because they’re trying to fit in with what they think everybody else believes.”
David, Anti-Woke Conservative
Age 44 • White man • Lubbock, Texas
“To me, ‘woke’ has become a negative term. It seems less about real fairness and more about forcing extreme ideas, silencing opposing opinions, and dividing people. It feels like it’s gone from awareness to intolerance.”
Susan, MAGA Hardliner
Age 41 • White woman • Talladega, Alabama
By contrast, Mainline Republicans and the Reluctant Right offer more varied critiques of progressive cultural politics. Rather than thinking of “wokeness” as an overarching ideology, these voters are often more familiar with specific issues labeled as "woke," such as pronoun requirements, diversity training, or debates over school curricula. Some focus less on the goals themselves than on the methods: they may support greater inclusivity in principle but object to what they see as heavy-handed enforcement, public shaming of dissenters, or a lack of tolerance for different viewpoints.
“For me, it’s become a little bit of an issue because it’s like every single time you turn on the TV, every single show that you watch, it’s almost like the ‘wokeness’ for a long time was more of the focus than what the show was supposed to be about.”
Hannah, Reluctant Right
Age 28 • White woman • Mount Hope, West Virginia
“While some people take things too far, most efforts to be ‘woke’ just try to make schools and media more inclusive and respectful. The problem isn’t ‘wokeness’ itself; it’s when people stop having open discussions and just label each other.”
Mark, Mainline Republican
Age 19 • Asian American man • Carmichael, California
3. “Wokeness” is seen as a threat to basic freedoms
Central to the concerns among the Trump voters is the belief that progressive cultural politics threaten core American freedoms and values, identifying three principal threats:
Freedom of speech: Progressive activists have restricted what can be said without fear of social or professional retribution, creating a climate of self-censorship.
Freedom of belief: Schools, universities, and corporations have imposed a progressive ideology through institutional authority, often amplified by sympathetic media coverage that marginalizes dissenting views.
Merit and fairness: Group identity has been elevated over individual achievement, undermining the principle that hard work and talent should determine success.
Together, these perceived threats drive a powerful impulse to confront and dismantle what many in the coalition see as a coordinated assault on fundamental American principles.
For many Trump voters, opposition to progressive cultural politics stems from the fear that it is damaging the minds, morals, and well-being of the next generation. Three in four Trump voters (75 percent) agree that “younger Americans are worse off because of ideas pushed by the Left”—a belief that encompasses concerns about everything from gender ideology in schools to the erosion of meritocracy to what they see as a culture of victimhood.
This conviction is nearly unanimous among MAGA Hardliners (96 percent) and Anti-Woke Conservatives (96 percent). Even among the more moderate Mainline Republicans and Reluctant Right, majorities (54 percent and 55 percent, respectively) share this concern, suggesting that worry about cultural progressivism’s impact on youth transcends the most ideological segments of the Trump coalition.
“My kids start school soon and we we’re just, you know, worried about indoctrination. We’ve seen a lot of, you know, what they consider ‘woke’ or whatever and ‘woke’ behaviors in school. There’s them trying to teach kids certain things. I just didn’t want my kids to be near that. I want to keep my kids’ innocence safe.”
Jada , Anti-Woke Conservative
Age 28 • Black woman • Lexington, South Carolina
Conclusion: The end of “wokeness”?
A troubling trend has emerged throughout the second Trump presidency: episodes of right-leaning efforts to punish or silence liberal voices, as seen after the killing of Charlie Kirk. The anti-woke backlash risks hypocrisy by mirroring the moral absolutism that it seeks to oppose. The danger is a perpetual cycle in which each side claims to defend freedom while using cultural and political power to silence dissent and enforce conformity.
Americans face a stark choice between two futures. One path leads to a cycle of cultural combat where victory means silencing opponents rather than persuading them—an expectation that whoever holds power determines acceptable speech, belief, and expression. The alternative requires genuine commitment to principles that constrain everyone: defending free expression even when offensive, tolerating disagreement even when frustrating, and maintaining fair competition even when outcomes disappoint.
The question is not whether “wokeness” has peaked, but whether Americans can build a culture that resists any ideology’s claim to absolute authority—progressive or conservative, Left or Right.
The internal dynamics of the Trump coalition will play a decisive role in which path America takes. How MAGA Hardliners, Anti-Woke Conservatives, Mainline Republicans, and the Reluctant Right negotiate their differences—and how leaders respond to their competing priorities—will determine whether institutions and policies evolve toward genuine pluralism or perpetuate the polarized cultural conflict that has defined recent years.
To read the full chapter on wokeness and the rest of the Beyond MAGA report, visit BeyondMAGA.us. To hear directly from the researchers behind the report, watch our Beyond MAGA launch webinar here.
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Key Takeaway for me: “The question is not whether “wokeness” has peaked, but whether Americans can build a culture that resists any ideology’s claim to absolute authority—progressive or conservative, Left or Right.” Our challenge is to chart the pathway to making that happen.
Absolutely fascinating. Thank you for this important report. The conclusion should be essential reading for all Americans.