Professor Christopher Sebastian Parker and co-author Rachel Blum’s (University of Oklahoma) new data, the Panel Study of the MAGA Movement (PSMM), was featured in Thomas Edsall’s New York Times Op-Ed today. This two-wave panel study measures attitudes of MAGA supporters around issues like racism, nativism, BLM, protest, Covid-19, and the 2020 election. Survey participants were sampled through Facebook ads and yielded 1,431 respondents, with the first wave collected in late December and the second wave collected, crucially, three weeks after the Capitol Riots.
In their preliminary analysis, Parker and Blum find that the MAGA movement is “overwhelmingly white, male, Christian, retired, and over 65 years of age,” extremely politically active, and supportive of conservative groups like those which are pro-gun, pro-police, pro-life, and anti-lockdown. While members of the MAGA movement are all in support of the Republican Party, that support is not universally strong; rather, “only roughly 60 percent are solid Republicans, and the rest either “lean” Republican or Independent.” Last, the findings from this study indicate that “MAGA is populated with a good number of racist, sexists, and nativists.”
In the context of the “stop the steal” movement that motivated the Capitol Riots, it is no surprise that “The MAGA movement overwhelmingly believes Trump’s election fraud claims, would have supported him for a “third term”(had it been an option), and don’t believe that voting should be made easier.” Furthermore, “the vast majority of MAGA supporters blame Antifa for the riots, not Trump (he bears almost no responsibility, according to them); only 3 percent of them think he should be impeached, versus the 97 percent who think he deserves a walk.”
In his article, which integrates analyses from a number of Political Scientists on the future of American Politics and far-Right extremism, Edsall writes that “The key question is whether the formation of an angry and virulently discontent base of MAGA voters in the Republican Party — spreading obscurantist, cultish pseudo-politics — will push the long-term problems of polarization past a tipping point, threatening even more dangerous levels of disruption to the political system.”
For Parker and Blum, these fears well-founded: “These findings are but the tip of the proverbial iceberg. We have much more to share. For us, the implications are clear: our country is in grave danger since one of the two major parties is essentially captured by the MAGA movement.”
Details about the data, methodology, and preliminary findings can be found here.
