In the 2024 presidential election, President Donald Trump managed to bring together a more racially and ideologically diverse group of American voters into the GOP tent. He brought in MAHA moms, tech bros, wrestling enthusiasts, McDonald’s lovers, and Democrats against illegal immigration.
About a year after his win, the Manhattan Institute conducted a study looking at the ideological makeup of today’s Republican Party.
Jesse Arm, a co-author of the study, told the Deseret News that there are two distinctly separate groups of people in the post-2024 Republican Party.
The first group, “core Republicans,” makes up about 65% of the GOP. This group has “been voting for the Republican Party and Republican candidates for quite some time and tends to be more conservative and less conspiratorial,” he said. They are fiscally conservative, hawkish on China, supportive of Israel, and have consistent viewpoints on social issues like DEI and transgender issues.
The other group belongs to “new entrants,” which make up 29% of the GOP. They are not an “ideologically coherent, Buchananite bloc,” Arm said.
They are “a lot more likely to have voted for Democrats, a lot more likely to believe in so-called conspiracies and are a lot more likely to be more liberal on pretty much every policy dimension we tested.” new entrants also viewed every political figure mentioned in the study more negatively than core Republicans.
Interviews for the study were conducted in mid-October, surveying about 1,500 Republicans/2024 Trump voters, 300 Black Republicans/2024 Trump voters, 500 Hispanic Republicans/Trump voters and 500 other registered voters.
The question central to the Manhattan Institute’s study: Can Trump’s coalition remain cohesive once he exits the stage? Or is it inherently unstable?
The great unifier: Illegal immigration and deportation
Republicans are most unified on illegal immigration and deportation. The vast majority say illegal immigrants should be deported, though they disagree on how it should be done.
About a third (34%) say deportation should be carried out carefully with due process, and 37% say ICE should deport as many immigrants who are living in the country illegally as possible by any means. A little less than a quarter say ICE should focus on deporting criminals, and just 3% say immigrants should not be deported.
Hispanic Republicans are more likely than the average Republican to support maximum deportation enforcement.
Republicans also remain united in the belief that the U.S. should support high-skilled legal immigration. Slightly more than a third (35%) say it should be easier for high-skilled individuals to immigrate, about half say it should stay the same, and 9% say it should be decreased.
Men are more likely than women to support increasing high-skilled immigration.
Significantly more college graduates support increasing high-skilled immigration than non-graduates, and new entrants are more likely (47%) to support increasing high-skilled immigration than Core Republicans (31%).
Younger Republican voters who attend church less likely to be racist, antisemitic
The overwhelming majority of Republicans reject racism, antisemitism and conspiratorial thinking.
However, a meaningful minority of 17% meets the study’s definition of “Anti-Jewish Republican.” Anti-Jewish sentiment was not restricted to Republicans; the survey found the same sentiment among 20% of Democrats.
On the definition of “Anti-Jewish Republican,” the study says “a respondent falls into this category if they (1) self-identify as both racist and antisemitic and express Holocaust denial or describe Israel as a colonial state, or (2) do not self-identify that way but nevertheless hold both of those extreme positions. Anti-Jewish Republicans are typically younger, disproportionately male, more likely to be college-educated, and significantly more likely to be new entrant Republicans. They are also more racially diverse.”
Age was a significant factor in the likeliness of self-identifying as racist. Republicans under 50 years old openly expressed racist (31%) or antisemitic (25%) views, whereas this was only true for 4% of those over 50.
The study also found that of the new entrants who held racist or antisemitic views, 78% held at least one liberal policy position on DEI, taxes, traditional values and transgender surgeries.
Of this group of younger new entrants, Arm said, “They weren’t just exclusively young, white, angry men, as you might predict them to be.”
The study also found that consistent church attendance was one of the strongest predictors that an individual would reject racist and antisemitic attitudes. It added, “Infrequent church attendance is, all else equal, one of the strongest predictors of falling into this segment.”
Conspiratorial beliefs boost support for political violence
As with racism and antisemitism, a large majority of Republicans (70%) said political violence is never justified. While 30% overall said political violence can be justified, there is a divide between core Republicans and new entrants.
A little over half (54%) of new entrants said political violence can be justified, while 80% of core Republicans opposed it.
The study also found that certain factors increased the propensity to justify political violence. For instance, support for political violence rose significantly as belief in conspiracy theories increased.
Age was also a strong predictor. Over half (57%) of those under 50 justified political violence, while just 13% of those over 50 said the same.
Holocaust denial varies sharply by race and age
The study found that younger men were especially likely to believe the Holocaust was greatly exaggerated or didn’t happen as historians describe. Over half (54%) of men under 50 and 41% of men over 50 agree.
However, there were major differences in this belief among races. More than three-quarters (77%) of Hispanic GOP voters, 66% of Black GOP voters and 30% of white GOP voters said they believe the Holocaust was greatly exaggerated.
New entrants as a whole were three times as likely to believe most or all of the common conspiracy theories listed, and 63% of most conspiracy-minded GOP voters previously voted for Bill Clinton, Barack Obama or Joe Biden at least once since 2008.
Study ranks major GOP voices’ favorability
The Manhattan Institute also asked participants how they viewed politicians and media podcasters, including Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens and Ben Shapiro.
Shapiro scored the most favorably among all U.S. voters by +14% — significantly more popular than Carlson, Owens, Vance or Trump.
Owens was the most divisive figure, with half viewing her favorably and about a quarter (23%) viewing her unfavorably. Voters under 50 were much more likely (62%) to view her favorably than those over 50 (42%), and men were more likely (56%) to have a positive opinion of Owens than women (42%). Owens was also most popular among Black Republicans (62%) and new entrants (58%).
The study did not find a relationship between being antisemitic and holding a favorable view of either Carlson or Owens.
