Understanding the MAGA Voter

The default way that rank and file Democrats think of MAGA voters is that they are “stupid,” by which they mean low IQ.  While it is true that MAGA voters are typically poorly educated (Trump: “I love the poorly educated”) (2/3 of MAGA voters are NOT college educated, while half of Democratic voters are college educated), that does not make them stupid.  And they feel disrespected, not without cause, by their better educated sisters and brothers.  Intelligence may correlate with education but history is replete with brilliant minds of little formal education and foolish PhDs.  In addition, my own definition of stupidity is stupid by choice (“don’t bother me with facts, my mind is already made up”), not by low IQ.   And stupid by choice (let’s call it “operational stupidity”) is much more pernicious than stupid by low IQ.  The clinical word that describes this kind of lazy and stubborn stupidity is “confirmation bias” (“I will only listen to news sources that support my own beliefs”).  But confirmation bias is not exclusive to MAGA voters.  A MAGA voter listens to Truth Social and Fox News, but a liberal voter listens to MSNBC and late night talk TV.  Indeed, confirmation bias seems to be universal among humans.  So, maybe we are all kinda stupid, apparently no one likes admitting he was wrong!  Or likes to THINK, rather than react without thought!

But more important than the intellectual and educational divide is the Rural/Urban divide.  City dwellers vote Democratic, country dwellers vote Republican.  But there are tens of millions more city voters than country voters, so how do you explain Trump’s winning elections?

There are two other reasons that explain Trump's appeal to these voters.  One, he speaks their language: he says things that society frowns upon, that they would never let their kids get away with saying; but Trump gets away with it!  Second, they recognize him as the class bully, and their instinct is to stay on the bully's good side so as not to become the bully's patsy; they have known the bully dynamic for all their young lives, and they don't want to be on the losing side.

I would suggest, finally, that the underlying trait of MAGA voters is that they are populists!  Whazzat?   A populist is someone who is disgusted with establishment politics.  Everyday Americans have a right to be disgusted with both parties (“a pox on both their houses”), as both parties have abandoned everyday Americans in favor of their Big Money donors.  Especially Democrats, who had always courted these average Americans, but stopped delivering decades ago.  The rise of independent voters is proof of the power of populism (independents now make up 45% of the electorate)!  Trump never claimed to be a classical Republican, but he surely appeals to populist Americans!

But so did Bernie Sanders.  Here is where things get really interesting!

Number 1: Bernie Sanders is the most popular American politician today, leading Donald Trump by 18 favorability points.   Second only to Michelle and Barack Obama and Arnold (“I’ll be back!”), all inactive politicians.

Number 2: In 2016, before the Democratic National Convention anointed Hillary Clinton as its presidential candidate, polls comparing Clinton vs Trump and Sanders vs Trump showed Sanders outperforming Clinton by decisive 5-10 point margins.   You will have to dig into all the polls on RCP’s site to see meaningful (same dates, same states) comparisons.  In addition, many are convinced that without Sanders’ supporters voting for Trump, Clinton would have won the presidency.  Many, if not most, populists had been Democratic voters who got fed up waiting for their party to deliver what they kept promising.  And, yes, race has played a role in (white) populism, too.

Conclusion: populism in the form of independent voters is the biggest voting bloc in the country today, and Trump won by being an anti-establishment populist and by not having to compete against the much more popular populist, Bernie Sanders.

P.S., why did Biden beat the populist Trump in 2020, by seven million votes?  The nation had four years to feed on Trump’s toxicity.  Why then did Trump beat Harris in 2024 by two million votes (“a landslide”)?  Because a toxic candidate who campaigns effectively will always beat a non-campaigning candidate (Biden), and Harris only had 100 days to campaign and did a piss poor job of it (choosing “coach” Tim Walz showed a real lack of political judgment), and her polling popularity during her four years with Biden was worse than her boss’s.

What do Democrats have to look forward to for the presidency in 2028?  The only Democrat with real name recognition who may lay claim to populism is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.  But she is too young and most of the country still sees her through the prism of Fox News; she would LOSE!  Given another four or eight years, she is the future of the Democratic Party.  Can J.D. Vance lay claim to populism?  NO!  He is a pure opportunist who would lose to any viable Democratic candidate.  Like whom?  Like Josh Shapiro, governor of Pennsylvania; like Wes Moore, governor of Maryland; like Pete Buttigieg, the best debater in politics; like Andy Beshear, governor of Kentucky.   Democrats have a really good shot at the presidency in 2028.  But what do Democrats do best?  They lose elections.  They need to read my book, Stop the Steal: The Handbook for Democrats who want to win their Elections,  the sooner the better.  Our future depends on it!

Addendum: Friday, 03/20/2026

A psychologist friend of mine, after reading this post, suggested that much of the MAGA mind was the consequence of misinformation that came their way via the media that they were fed (passive voice intentional), be it by Fox News, Truth Social or X (fka Twitter)(but each of us chooses the media that then feeds us).  Indeed, Mary L. Trump(Donald Trump’s niece)’s book, Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man, leaves the reader with real empathy for Donald, having been raised by his father, the ultra-cruel Fred Trump.  Dick Cheney was routinely blamed for George W. Bush’s presidency, and Steven Miller is routinely blamed for his boss’s excesses.  This is Svengali thinking, where a mastermind controls the actions of a nominally powerful person.  There is no denying the real impact of external forces on all of our lives (see especially the second paragraph of chapter 47 of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, The Mat Maker), but at what point do we all have agency over our own actions?  Unlike the world seen through a psychological lens, the world of politics and the law gives every man full agency over his life.  You did the deed, you are responsible.  Period (ah, the insanity defense!).  Neither the world of politics nor the law is interested in how you became what you became, or why you did what you did.  We live in a world of personal agency, of free will, whether or not we are truly in charge of the decisions that inform our lives.