Insights from The New GOP: Survey Analysis of Americans Overall, Today’s Republican Coalition, and the Minorities of MAGA
The poll is available at the Manhattan Institute: Arm, Jesse, and Matthew Knee. “The New GOP.” Manhattan Institute, December 1, 2025.
https://manhattan.institute/article/the-new-gop-survey-analysis-of-americans-overall-todays-republican-coalition-and-the-minorities-of-maga.
This survey reveals several profound and troubling patterns that go far beyond typical partisan disagreements. Here are what I see as the most significant insights. This document is based on the combined toplines document. Assistance from Claude AI.
The Epistemological Break
The most consequential finding is the wholesale rejection of mainstream institutions as arbiters of truth. When 45% of Republican/Trump voters say they become more likely to believe something when experts dismiss it as a conspiracy theory, we’re witnessing an inverted epistemology. This isn’t skepticism—it’s an anti-epistemology where establishment rejection becomes evidence of truth. This explains why belief in demonstrably false claims is so high: 51% believe the 2020 election was decided by fraud, 37% believe the Holocaust was exaggerated or fabricated, 36% believe the moon landing was faked.
What makes this particularly striking is the pattern holds across multiple domains—medicine, history, science, elections. The common thread isn’t the specific claim but the rejection of authoritative sources. When 41% believe modern medicine “often does more harm than good,” we’re seeing a comprehensive loss of faith in expert knowledge systems. This is why one coalition can believe the election was stolen, vaccines are dangerous, and the Holocaust was exaggerated—not because evidence supports these claims, but because they’ve adopted a new rule: “What authorities say is false is probably true.”
The Radicalization of Minority Trump Voters
Perhaps the survey’s most unexpected finding is that Hispanic and Black Trump voters hold even more extreme positions than the general GOP/Trump coalition. Among Hispanic GOP/Trump voters, 69% believe the Holocaust was “greatly exaggerated or did not happen as historians describe” (with 69% saying definitely true). These same voters show higher conspiracy theory acceptance across the board and stronger support for aggressive policies like mass deportation.
This challenges simplistic narratives about minority voters gravitating toward moderation. Instead, it suggests these voters are attracted to precisely the most insurgent, anti-establishment elements of Trumpism. The 44% of Hispanic Trump voters who identify with MAGA (versus traditional conservatism) tells us these aren’t voters being pulled by economic conservatism or social tradition—they’re drawn to the movement’s oppositional stance itself.
Masculinity as Civilizational Narrative
The 68% agreement that “Western society today is too feminine” and needs “hard, logical, masculine thinking” reveals how central gender anxiety is to the coalition’s worldview. This isn’t merely about specific policies like transgender issues (though 72% oppose medical interventions for minors). Rather, it’s a comprehensive narrative of civilizational decline attributed to feminization. The survey shows this intersects with views on everything from leadership style (51% prefer “bold, attention-grabbing” leaders) to foreign policy (67% support “peace through strength” over “diplomacy first”).
This masculine crisis narrative provides the emotional throughline connecting otherwise disparate grievances—from vaccine skepticism to immigration restrictionism to rejection of “woke” ideology.
The Dual Loyalty Anxiety
The data on perceived foreign loyalties is genuinely alarming. Among GOP/Trump voters, 28% believe “nearly all” or “most” Jewish Americans are more loyal to a foreign country than to the United States. For Arab/Muslim Americans, this rises to 41%. For Chinese Americans, 29%. Even 25% believe this about Italian Americans.
This represents a fundamental crisis of confidence in American pluralism. The United States has always relied on the assumption that people with ethnic, religious, or cultural ties elsewhere could nonetheless be fully American. When large portions of one major party’s coalition reject this premise, it suggests a retreat toward blood-and-soil nationalism that’s incompatible with America’s historical identity.
The Limited Scope of Economic Populism
Despite Trump’s populist rhetoric, actual economic redistribution has limited appeal. A full 63% say “nobody should pay higher taxes, we should cut spending because government is ineffective” versus just 30% supporting higher taxes on upper-income brackets. This reveals that Trumpism is fundamentally cultural populism rather than economic populism. The enemy isn’t wealth or corporations—it’s cultural elites, experts, and institutions.
The 54% support for tariffs despite their cost seems contradictory until you realize tariffs fit the cultural-nationalist narrative in a way that progressive taxation doesn’t. Tariffs are about protecting American sovereignty and punishing foreign competitors; progressive taxation is about domestic redistribution.
The Mainstreaming of Extremism
Perhaps most concerning is how extremist positions have been normalized within the coalition. When 15% of respondents identify themselves as someone who “openly expresses racist views” and another 22% say such people shouldn’t be held accountable due to “cancel culture,” we’re seeing not just tolerance but defiant embrace of positions that were universally condemned across the political spectrum a generation ago.
The 12% who identify as openly antisemitic, combined with the high belief that Jewish Americans harbor dual loyalty, suggests antisemitism is being repackaged as legitimate skepticism about “globalist” elites.
The Question of Direction
Interestingly, despite the radicalism on cultural issues, only 7% want to “burn down” America’s economic and social system. Most (52%) want to “reform it” or (37%) “preserve it” with gradual change. This suggests the coalition sees itself as defending a traditional America against revolutionary progressive change—even as its epistemological break and conspiratorial worldview represent their own form of radicalism.
The 84% who believe in holding people to high standards and punishing rule-breakers seems at odds with supporting a leader who himself breaks norms constantly. This reveals the core tension: rules are for restraining enemies (cultural elites, immigrants, political opponents), not for constraining “us.”
What This Means for American Politics
This data suggests the GOP coalition has moved beyond conventional conservatism into something qualitatively different—a counter-establishment movement defined more by what it opposes (expertise, pluralism, cultural change) than what it proposes. The 36% who identify with MAGA versus traditional conservatism understates the movement’s transformation, since even “traditional conservatives” in this coalition hold many views that would have been fringe positions in the Reagan or Bush eras.
The path dependency here is deeply concerning. Once a movement’s identity becomes rooted in rejecting mainstream institutions and inverting their truth claims, there’s no obvious mechanism for correction. Each time reality contradicts the movement’s narratives, that contradiction becomes further evidence of conspiracy rather than cause for reconsideration.
The participation of Hispanic and Black voters in the most radical positions suggests this isn’t simply about white racial anxiety (though that’s certainly present). Instead, it represents a broader alienation from post-1960s American elite culture that crosses some racial lines while remaining predominantly white in raw numbers.
For American democracy, the implications are stark. A political coalition comprising roughly half the electorate that believes elections are routinely stolen, that fundamental historical facts are fabrications, and that various ethnic and religious groups harbor treasonous loyalties cannot be a reliable participant in democratic governance. Democracy requires shared factual premises and acceptance of legitimate opposition—both of which this data suggests are eroding within a major party coalition.