January 24, 2026

"If ideological consistency can’t explain the enduring loyalty of Trump’s base, what does?"

I'm reading "The Four Types of Trump Supporter/The president’s political power depends on his ability to play different roles for different parts of his coalition," by Daniel Yudkin and Stephen Hawkins" (The Atlantic)(gift link).

1. "MAGA Hardliners" — 29% — "mostly composed of white Gen Xers and Baby Boomers," "animated by the belief... in America’s existential struggle between good and evil."

2. "Anti-Woke Conservatives" — 21% — "a more secular and affluent group of voters deeply frustrated by what they perceive as the takeover of schools, culture, and institutions by the progressive left."

3. "Mainline Republicans" — 30% —  "a more racially diverse group of middle-of-the-road conservatives who prioritize border security, a strong economy, and cultural stability."

4. "Reluctant Right" — 20% — "ambivalent" people who thought Trump "seemed 'less bad' than the alternative." (I'm laughing at "the alternative" — the name Kamala doesn't even appear in the article.)

Those are the 4 types of Trump supporters, we're told. Then there are 4 roles that Trump plays:

1. "Builder" — 58% of these Trump supporters saw him as "a builder trying to fix a broken system."

2. "Redeemer" — "someone who can restore his supporters’ status and respect in a society that they feel has long looked down on them." 84% agreed that "President Trump respects people like me."

3. "Blasphemer"— "a violator of progressive norms." 

4. "Grand narrator" — Trump presents himself as the hero in a story of the "collapse of trust in American institutions including Congress, the press, academia, and the scientific establishment." 

59 comments:

Ampersand said...

Some people are in all 4 categories.

gilbar said...

i guess I'm a 2, and i like that Trump is a 3

Shouting Thomas said...

Then there are the people, like me, who simply agree most of the time with Trump on policy. His policies are paying off. DOW at record highs for months. Gas at $2.75. Eggs at $2/doz. Tariffs producing huge revenues. Clearing out the illegals from the welfare and voting rolls. Ending the racist DEI scams.

hombre said...

Atlantic is for morons who can’t acknowledge that Democrats are destroyers. Having said that the four categories aren’t too far from the truth. Interesting that Atlantic readers probably need to be told that “ideological consistency” isn’t the biggy. It is for diehard Democrats. It’s all they have left.

Eva Marie said...

Put me down as an American Lives Matter Conservative.
2 related points:
1. Record low illegal border crossings
2. Murders plummeted more than 20% from the year before, the single-largest one-year drop on record — and 2025's might be the lowest murder rate in the U.S. since 1900, a new study found.
Everything else is good but secondary.

FormerLawClerk said...

Democrats believe there are only 4 types of Republicans, but it's not that list. It's this one:

* Deplorables
* Racists
* Mysoginists
* Nazis

narciso said...

The atlantic explaining anything is amusing

Peachy said...

How democrats are loyal to creepy mob puppets like Walz, Kamala, Newsum, biden... list goes on - is the real problem.

hombre said...

Ampersand (11:04) is likely correct. We are more “diverse” than Democrats.

Temujin said...

There are people like me, with a background of voting for lame Republicans or even more lame Libertarians, who wanted someone to, just once, go up to Washington DC and blow the thing up. Say goodbye to standard operating procedure and don't worry about what you say, who you say it to, or what the media has to think about any of it. Just. Get. Things. Done.

Trump is doing just that. And while I don't like listening to him speak most of the time, I do find it fun to see the reactions from people in the media, other world leaders, or other politicians when he says things to their faces that so many of us have thought in our own heads for years. It's kinda fun. And a long time coming.

I don't consider myself any of those items in the listicle, and I doubt very much that I'm unique in how I see this.

Big Mike said...

@Althouse, you will not understand Republicans, much less MAGA or MAHA Republicans, by reading “Gorillas in the Mist” articles from the New York Times, or the Washington Post, or — especially! — The Atlantic. Try harder.

john mosby said...

4 types of Democrats:

1. Traditionals - stayed with the party all this time; not gonna leave it.

2. Never-Trumpers

3. International Socialists - combine a directed economy with free international trade and movement of labor (huh? You're right- they don't really go together)

4. DEI/LGBTQ/PLO/other marginalized group aficionados. CC, JSM

Peachy said...

In corrupt backwards Communist Somalia - the government gives 10-14 year old boys meth - and tells them to kill their families. and they do.

That's why they were imported to do the left's dirty work.
they are trained to do dirty work back home.

but their skin is dark, so the white left can scream 'You racist!" right on Q - if you dare point out the problem.

tim maguire said...

I normally couldn’t care less how Trump opponents describe Trump and his supporters, but this isn’t terrible.

n.n said...

Pro-Choice intersectionality? A plausible fetus... feature, but improbable conception, baby.

FormerLawClerk said...

I'm one of those MAGA supporters because Donald Trump was the first person to ask: Where's the birth certificate?

He knew Obama was Kenyan and that his election to the Presidency was the fakest bullshit election our country ever had.

So for the next two years, Democrats struggled to produce a birth certificate and then suddenly one day - voila - they produced it.

A pristine 47-year-old birth certificate printed yesterday. Paper didn't even have dust on it and the forgery was promptly called out by law enforcement officials who studied it.

Everything that has followed is the result of that single simple question Trump asked about Barack Obama: Where's the birth certificate? A question he KNEW Democrats could not and would not answer.

That led to the infamous White House Correspondents Association circle-jerk where Obama dunked on Trump for 2 hours while he had to just sit there and take it, to the absolute glee of the assorted media assholes in attendance.

That dinner made Donald Trump and cemented his legacy forever.

All because Democrats put on a fake election with a fake candidate who isn't even from the United States.

Peachy said...

Temujin - 100%.

Peachy said...

What media outlet is breaking down the cult loyalist lied-to lie-eating left?

narciso said...

They are all crazy just some in more ways

narciso said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Peachy said...

Perhaps homosexuals should stop allowing themselves to be used buy the left?

Peachy said...

FLC - O's Birth certificate obsession is right up there with the left's Jan 6th obsession.

Jersey Fled said...

Amazingly the numbers add up to 100%, suggesting no overlap.

Skeptical Voter said...

Daniell Yudkin and Stephen Hawkins (if I've got the authors name's right) seem to look at Trump supporters as chimpanzees and are going for the Jane Goodall award.

I dunno--Me Tarzan them Jane.

FormerLawClerk said...

O's Birth certificate obsession brought us Trump.

Peachy said...

"buy" lol - sort of works.
i meant "by"

G. Poulin said...

People don't support Trump because they share a common ideology or program. They support him to give a big giant "fuck you" middle finger to our treasonous insane perverted ruling class.

bagoh20 said...

Those are a list of reason, not types of people. Most have more than one of those reasons.
The remaining one is: I'm not crazy.

boatbuilder said...

84% agreed that "President Trump respects people like me."

This is the key. Remember that this is the guy that the MSM keeps telling us is the most divisive President in history.

boatbuilder said...

Peachy--I think that is great. How many liberals are seeing that and saying: "Wait. Scott Bessent is gay? And why does Gavin Newsom think there's something wrong with that?"

It will be very hard to square that with the totally unfounded lefty perception of Trump as "homophobe."

Aggie said...

I'm in more than one category too, but there's another badly-overlooked category: Results-oriented skeptics. That's my strongest affinity. I don't listen much to what Trump says, I watch what he does, and I watch what is done to him by his enemies. The latter is what drove me to vote for him the first time, I absolutely wanted to limit the power of those poisonous types of people - I was voting against them, and their way of governing. We got a bellyful of that style in Dementia Joe's term.

The second time I voted for Trump was at least equally based on what he had managed to accomplish his first term, in absolute defiance and brute force over the orcs that tormented him non-stop for 4 years and beyond.

tcrosse said...

There are moderates, centrists, and independents who have been put off by the Democrats' surge to the left. This gets us (yes, I'm one) branded as "reluctant" right. RFK Jr and Tulsi Gabbard fit into that category.

Jaq said...

Anybody who doesn't think that the collapse in trust of American institutions is not justified didn't pay attention when one of the 15K autopen signed pardons was for Anthony Fauci, who, finding a way around Congressional prohibitions, moved his experiments on bat viruses with gene splicing overseas and those experiments directly led to the death of millions, and oh, BTW, the pardon in that one case was specifically back dated further in order to cover that act, which, as I said again, led to the deaths of millions and untold economic and social harm.

What would make anybody mad about that?

Jaq said...

Imagine issuing a pardon to make it all but impossible to investigate the causes of a world wide disaster. It's like issuing an order not to investigate the cause of a plane crash, and absolving everybody involved without ever having learned the facts.

Jaq said...

There is a significant cohort of people who voted for Trump because of his professed stand against regime change wars, but to acknowledge that would be to acknowledge the very issue that makes the establishment so angry with Trump, since they are all for these endless wars.

Leland said...

20% growth in my

Leland said...

Trying to type… +20% growth in my retirement fund last year…

Also Hunter Biden losing his secret service detail.

Smilin' Jack said...

“"If ideological consistency can’t explain the enduring loyalty of Trump’s base, what does?"”

But ideological consistency does explain it. The consistent ideological insanity of the other side.

Beasts of England said...

’They support him to give a big giant "fuck you" middle finger to our treasonous insane perverted ruling class.’

I consider that to be the icing on the cake and I like icing.

Political Junkie said...

I am a bit of all 4.

Political Junkie said...

"What they perceive as a takeover by the progressive left" - Ha.

GRW3 said...

"less bad than the alternative"

Murder rates have dropped 20% nationwide since Trump resumed being President. Lowest levels (as % of population) since 1900. Hundreds (thousands?) of people are still alive because Trump returned. Any belief that we would had this turnaround under Que Mala?

chuck said...

I'm a simple man, I just hate commies.

Achilles said...

1. "MAGA Hardliners" — 29% — "mostly composed of white Gen Xers and Baby Boomers," "animated by the belief... in America’s existential struggle between good and evil."

This is a weak version of the truth.

The United States is the engine that freed a billion people from the yoke of tyranny and poverty.

We are fighting barbarians who want to tear the United States down and return the world to tyranny, misery, and poverty that you will still find in most of the world.

We are fighting Marxists who are parasites and can only exist after we have built wealth that they can steal.

We are fighting 3rd world invaders who come here and abuse our welfare programs with the aid of complicit traitors in our midst.

wendybar said...

What Temulin said @ 11:16 AM

Robert Cook said...

All morons.

Lazarus said...

They didn't do a very good job, but it wasn't that easy. Every election cycle somebody publishes an article about the four or five types of Republican or Democrat voters. Those analyses are worth a look and Yudkin and Hawkins probably did look at them. Trump voters, though, were people who cared about the border, trade and industry, and (ironically perhaps) staying out of foreign wars and minding our own business. Different voters had different other concerns. Did those really matter that much?

Some of the differences seem purely stylistic. "An existential battle between good and evil"? Some people might actually say that. Plenty of other Trump voters felt something like that but would be embarassed to actually put it in those words.

"Mainline Republicans" are "racially diverse"? Not to insult "Mainline Republicans" but those racially diverse voters usually don't fall into that category. "Reluctant Right"? How many Trump voters weren't reluctant in the beginning? Maybe somebody will come up with a meaningful typology of Trump voters but Yudkin and Hawkins haven't.

Kevin said...

So much analysis of Trump. So little of themselves...

Kevin said...

Jim: "You've got to remember that these are just simple journalists. These are people of the cities. The common clay of old media. You know... morons."

Jim at said...

Trump is doing just that. And while I don't like listening to him speak most of the time, I do find it fun to see the reactions from people in the media, other world leaders, or other politicians when he says things to their faces that so many of us have thought in our own heads for years. It's kinda fun. And a long time coming.

Yep. And I think they only time I ever listened to him was at the GOP convention a couple days after he was shot. And even then, I could only take about 10 minutes.

But, he's doing the things he said he'd do and that's what I voted for.

Jim at said...

All morons.

77,302,580 of them, boy. Deal with it.

Sebastian said...

Question for "mainline Republicans": why aren't you (also) anti-woke? Anyway, "enduring loyalty" is a big phrase--many Trump supporters are as transactional, what-have-you-done-for-me-lately as the man himself. Immigration enforcement, stronger defense, some anti-DEI action--I'll take it. Bigger budgets and debt, art-of-the-deal zigzags, liberal interventions in economy--not so great.

LilyBart said...

Sometimes Trump frustrates me, then I remember the prior 4 years under Biden, and that we could have been enduring Harris/Walz, and I'm satisfied that Trump is a good choice.

Josephbleau said...

Everyone likes what Trump is doing except for government employees and the media.

Rustygrommet said...

What Jim said.

Kurt Schuler said...

"The alternative" to which Althouse refers was not just Kamala Harris. It was originally Joe Biden until his obvious mental incapacity finally made him drop out of the race. Then the insiders who had engineered the Democratic primaries to favor Biden quickly coalesced around Harris, rather than allowing an open convention that would have given challengers a fair shot. To elect Harris would have been not so much to elect her as to elect the insiders who had stage-managed Biden. She was a weak candidate who had shown little capacity for national leadership. The open Republican primary process, in contrast, both revealed and generated popular enthusiasm for Trump. Biden and Harris did not arouse similar enthusiasm. Support for them resulted mainly from their not being Trump.

Robert Cook said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Robert Cook said...

"'All morons.'

"77,302,580 of them, boy. Deal with it."

Unfortunately, we are. We're now seeing the possible collapse of our democratic republic into a dictatorship, welcomed by those who are rooting for their stumble bum dictator.

(The votes I found online:
Trump: 77,168,458 votes (49.9%)
Harris: 74,749,891 votes (48.3%)
An extremely close vote, a plurality of 1.6% of those who voted...no landslide, no mandate by the American public. I suspect Trump's victory was a result of rigging, but I can also believe there are truly this many morons in our nation...as proved by you and the others who still applaud Trump's manifestly incompetent and incoherent "leadership," a leadership that is rightly turning the world against us.)


Robert Cook said...

"Everyone likes what Trump is doing except for government employees and the media."

OMG! Hahahahaha! You must be truly desperate to believe you are on the right side. Or maybe you need to make friends beyond the cranks and drunks down at your local tavern. Hahahaha!

Well, I guess if you want to see the USA collapse into ruins, a failed nation...you are on the right side.

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