Beyond MAGA

There is an image at the heart of American politics: a sea of red-hat-wearing MAGA supporters at a Trump campaign rally, representing the millions of Americans who voted for him over the past three elections — 63 million in 2016, 74 million in 2020, and 77 million in 2024. Yet this image is misleading. President Trump has built a coalition, not a cult. This coalition shares many common concerns, from unregulated immigration to progressive overreach to American decline. But it also contains groups with distinct identities, competing priorities, and clashing worldviews. And while there is a strong core of ardent Trump supporters whose identity is wrapped up in the MAGA movement, they represent a minority: only 38 percent of Trump voters say that being MAGA is important to them.

Drawing on surveys, interviews and group conversations conducted with over 10,000 Trump voters over 10 months concluding in early 2026, this study finds four distinct types of Trump voters: MAGA Hardliners, Anti-Woke Conservatives, Mainline Republicans, and the Reluctant Right.

• MAGA Hardliners represent the fiery core of Trump’s base. They are fiercely loyal, deeply religious, and animated by a sense that America is in an existential struggle between good and evil, with God firmly on their side.
• Anti-Woke Conservatives are relatively well-off, politically engaged, and deeply frustrated by the perceived takeover of schools, culture, and institutions by the progressive left.
• Mainline Republicans are middle-of-the-road conservatives who play by the rules and expect others to do the same. Most do not follow politics closely. For them, Trump’s strength is that he advances familiar conservative priorities: securing the border, keeping the economy strong, and preserving a sense of cultural stability.
• The Reluctant Right is the most ambivalent cohort of Trump’s coalition, and the group most likely to have voted for Trump transactionally: the businessman who was “less bad” than the alternative. Many feel disconnected from national politics and believe politicians do not share their priorities.

This report reveals the diversity within the Trump coalition on key questions such as leadership, immigration, and “wokeness.” It also examines trends among younger Trump voters, and their competing impulses toward national unity and political dominance.

President Trump occupies a singular place in the conservative political landscape. When asked whom they most agree with about politics among public figures, 73 percent of Trump voters choose the president, nearly twice as many as anyone else. President Trump is also considered “the best American alive today” by nearly a quarter of his voters — far more than any other individual.

While there has been much discussion about the fracturing of President Trump’s coalition, his voters mostly stand behind their choice. One year into his presidency, more than four in five MAGA Hardliners, Anti-Woke Conservatives, and Mainline Republicans said they still felt “confident” in their choice, a conviction that remained stable across the first year of Trump’s presidency. By contrast, only 41 percent of the Reluctant Right remained confident in their choice, a figure that has declined from 47 percent since April 2025.

Concerns about immigration played an important role in forging the Trump coalition. A common perception is that Trump voters are largely motivated by a dislike of newcomers and immigrants in general. There is evidence to suggest otherwise. On thermometer score questions, Trump voters express the same level of warmth toward legal immigrants (71) as Americans do on average (72). In fact, on average, they feel greater warmth toward legal immigrants than they do toward members of MAGA (68). Yet their feelings toward illegal or undocumented immigrants are colder than the average Americans’ by 10 points or more. MAGA Hardliners (10) and Anti-Woke Conservatives (13) are particularly hostile toward these groups.

On issues relating to immigration enforcement and deportations, differences between the Trump voters are also large. MAGA Hardliners and Anti-Woke Conservatives tend to support aggressive measures, such as deporting individuals without a hearing before a judge, while most Mainline Republicans and Reluctant Right do not. While undocumented immigration is a top priority for most Trump voters, they differ substantially on how far the administration should go in tackling it.

Opposition to the progressive left has been a driving force of Trump’s presidency. Today, nearly eight in ten (79 percent) Trump voters see “wokeness” as a problem, with almost universal concern among MAGA Hardliners and Anti-Woke Conservatives. While lower in intensity, frustration with perceived progressive excess is held by clear majorities even of the less politically engaged voter types, suggesting it is a widely held concern across the coalition.

Americans’ trust in institutions has been in decline for decades. But many Trump voters overwhelmingly agree on why our political and cultural institutions are no longer worthy of trust and who should be held to blame. At least in recent years, they perceive that elites with progressive agendas have power over these institutions. Three in four (76 percent) agree that “the woke left has ruined American education, news, and entertainment” compared to just 42 percent of all Americans, with majorities of every Trump voter type in agreement — though there is a significant spread between the most and least concerned groups.

A deeper analysis of Gen Z and Millennial Trump voters points to an emergent “new traditionalism.” This is less of a settled or coherent ideology and more the developing threads of a countercultural conservative movement that departs from both its own generation and from older conservatives in several ways.

For example, younger Trump voters differ markedly in their views on gender roles. A quarter of this group (26 percent) believe “the man should lead, and the woman should follow” — more than twice the rate of older Trump voters (10 percent) and twice that of non-Trump voters their age (13 percent). Similarly, half (49 percent) believe that “American culture needs more masculinity,” as compared to 39 percent of older Trump voters and 25 percent of younger non-Trump voters.

On faith, many younger Trump voters do not view religiosity as conformity: instead, they are significantly more likely (43 percent) than both older Trump voters (28 percent) and other younger non-Trump voters (29 percent) to believe that “to be religious” is more rebellious than “to be an atheist.”

Younger Trump voters are also less committed to democratic norms, with almost half (48 percent) willing to support President Trump ignoring the Supreme Court if doing so would advance his goals, compared to 35 percent of older Trump voters and one in four (26 percent) of younger non-Trump voters. Whether this willingness to bypass democratic guardrails solidifies or recedes will depend on how political leaders and institutions respond — and whether they offer young voters compelling reasons to invest in democratic processes.

Much is at stake in better understanding the 77 million Americans who make up the Trump voter coalition. The coalition's internal differences run through nearly every major issue facing the country. On immigration, some want mass deportations while others prioritize border security with paths to legal status. On democratic norms, the Reluctant Right insists on constitutional limits while majorities of other segments are ready to test those boundaries. On faith, some see America as fundamentally a Christian nation requiring government protection while others prioritize religious freedom and pluralism.

Yet these divisions within the Trump voter coalition exist alongside striking agreement: America is in crisis, the political establishment has failed, and the other side holds them in contempt. Whether the coalition endures may depend on whether these shared frustrations remain strong enough to override differences about deeply-held identities and about what lines should not be crossed.

But understanding the breadth of views within the Trump voter coalition also suggests that America's path need not be one of deepening division. Americans’ differences and disagreements should not be minimized, but the battle lines of recent years rarely capture the complexity within coalitions — nor the commonalities across them.

From April 2025 to January 2026, More in Common conducted six online surveys of US adult citizens designed to be representative of the American adult population. In parallel, we oversampled US adults who voted for Donald Trump in 2024 with demographic targets to ensure they were representative of the 2024 Trump electorate. In total, we interviewed 10,971 Trump 2024 voters and 7,400 non-Trump voters across the six survey waves.

To better understand the diversity within the 2024 Trump voter coalition, we identified four distinct types of Trump supporters through a cluster analysis of attitudinal and behavioral variables. This approach goes beyond demographics to capture the core attitudes, behaviors and identities that differentiate Trump voters. Greater detail about our segmentation methods is provided in the methodology chapter of the report.

In addition to survey research and segmentation, we drew on qualitative insights from our Americans in Conversation (AIC) panel, an ongoing online community of approximately 200 Americans from diverse political and demographic backgrounds. We also conducted 26 in-depth interviews and 13 focus groups with 2024 Trump voters. These provided richer context to our four Trump voter types and personal narratives that complemented the survey findings.

Together, this mixed-methods approach allowed us to capture not only the broad patterns in public opinion of Trump voters but also the underlying differences in values, experiences, and perspectives within the 2024 Trump voter coalition. Our full methodology is available in the report.