49.8%: The Unstable Republican Minority in America
Donald Trump, President of the United States pauses with a concerned expression while delivering a speech at a campaign rally held at the Mohegan Sun Arena in Pennsylvania, August 2, 2018. Source: Evan Al-Amin / Shutterstock
In 2024, the 45th and now 47th President of the United States, Donald Trump, returned to power less than 4 years after the entirety of the political mainstream wrote his career off as dead in the water. Trump proclaimed that the nation had given him “an unprecedented and powerful mandate” and that he had won in a “landslide.” Trump’s victory in the popular vote and the Republican sweep of House and Senate control have sent Democrats into a tailspin, with many feeling demoralized and fearful that Democrats will be unable to beat the emerging MAGA coalition unless the party makes drastic changes.
Democrats’ fears are not totally unfounded. The MAGA coalition of 2024 has unique strengths unseen for decades in the Republican Party. Trump has cobbled together a remarkably diverse coalition of farmers, evangelicals, blue-collar workers, ‘tech-bro’ billionaires, libertarians, and for the first time, large numbers of people of color, particularly Black and Hispanic men.
You may wonder, with one of the largest and most diverse coalitions that the Republican Party has ever seen, what percentage of the popular vote did Trump capture in 2024?
Trump not only failed to secure a majority of the popular vote, but his victory margin over Democratic nominee Kamala Harris was just 1.5%. This was the smallest popular vote margin of victory since 2000, even narrower than the margin by which Trump lost to Hillary Clinton in 2016.
Most notably, the electoral minority Trump commands is untenable at best and destined to implode at worst. Trump’s MAGA movement is united by a single thing: some form of skepticism toward who they perceive as “the establishment”. However, this shared view manifests itself in numerous and incompatible ways that set the Trump 2.0 presidency on a road to disaster. Let’s break it down:
Understanding the Factions of MAGA
The demographic groups of the MAGA coalition listed previously can be broken down broadly into three blocks: Traditional Conservatives, Populists, and Libertarians.
Traditional Conservatives are made up primarily of evangelicals and farmers who dominate regions like the Great Plains and the Interior West. They were the backbone of the Republican Party for most of the second half of the 20th Century, with farmers aligning themselves with the Republicans in the late 1890s and evangelicals solidifying their support in the late 1970s during the Reagan Revolution.
Populists are the wing of the party that is traditionally most associated with Trump’s brand of politics. It includes blue-collar workers and the increasing numbers of black and Hispanic men who support the Republican Party. These groups are either formerly Democratic voters or were entirely disengaged with politics in the pre-Trump era. Populists are most often concentrated in the Rust Belt and areas that have experienced urban decay.
Lastly, Libertarians form a large and ideologically consistent group. This bloc notably includes 'tech bro' billionaires who, while small in electoral numbers, give massive financial contributions to the Republican Party, granting them disproportionate influence in reshaping the party’s priorities and direction. This influence has been best demonstrated by the role of Elon Musk in leading the ‘Department of Government Efficiency, ’ which has been steering most actions coming out of the Trump White House.
Apples to Oranges
While general opposition to the “establishment” in some capacity unites these factions, they have little in common beyond that. Who do they perceive as the establishment? How do they combat it? What do they hope to gain? All three factions answer these questions differently, with some disagreement even among themselves.
For example, Traditional Conservatives generally perceive “the establishment” as a secular, urban class that aims to undermine traditional values and impose progressive agendas on the nation. However, this does not mean they seek to dismantle the federal state. The evangelicals in particular aim to co-opt the powers of the federal government to advance their own policy goals, pursuing policies like abortion bans, restrictions on LGBTQ+ rights, and increased government involvement in enforcing moral and religious values. Similarly, farmers heavily depend on federal subsidies to maintain their industry's competitiveness in the global market and generally support free trade policies that help ensure their products remain in demand abroad.
Populists perceive “the establishment” as an upper-middle-class, white-collar elite who have broadly failed to deliver them the upward social mobility that they expect in the promise of the American Dream. Populists believe the establishment has betrayed them with policies that favor globalism, corporate interests, and immigration, which they argue harm domestic workers and their ability to get ahead. Contrary to common assumptions, anti-immigrant rhetoric has found significant resonance within the Hispanic community. In Starr County, Texas, which is 97.7% Hispanic and on the US- Mexico border, Donald Trump won nearly 58% of the vote in 2024. This marked the first time in 132 years that the county, which had previously supported Barack Obama with 86% of the vote in 2012, voted for a Republican candidate.
In contrast to Traditional Conservatives, Populists seek to use the government to disrupt the political order and challenge entrenched elites. While Traditional Conservatives aim to preserve cultural values through government, Populists focus on reshaping the economy with protectionist policies, deregulation, and immigration restrictions. They view the government not as a moral force but as a tool to protect American workers from global competition and corporate interests, even calling for the dismantling of systems like trade agreements and immigration policies they see as harmful. This protectionism particularly hurts the traditional conservative farmers and corporations who rely on selling their products to global consumers and often rely on migrant workers to fill their job openings.
Libertarians are arguably the least compatible with the coalition as a whole. They view the "establishment" as the growing regulatory state. Following the example of their informal leader, Elon Musk, they aim to dismantle what they see as wasteful government agencies and spending. This has led to efforts to eliminate the Department of Education, end Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs, and abolish USAID, which helps develop poor countries by, among other things, sending food grown on American farms. Additionally, the Libertarian wing of the party is the most likely to champion a hands-off government on social issues, advocating for no restrictions on same-sex marriage, generally supporting abortion rights, and pushing for more lenient gun control laws.
These views sharply contradict those of the other two factions in the party. For example, eliminating the Department of Education would severely impact rural education, disproportionately affecting Traditional Conservatives, who are more likely to reside in these areas. Similarly, cutting USAID would reduce a key source of income for American farmers, hurting their already vulnerable financial sustainability. Furthermore, the new minorities joining the MAGA coalition tend to support programs like DEI, Medicaid, and SNAP and would be hit hardest by their removal. Lastly, Libertarians' general opposition to government intervention also clashes with both the Traditional Conservatives' push for more control over personal lives and the Populists' desire for government intervention to support economic policies that benefit them.
With these enormous differences in priorities and goals, the question shifts from "Can the coalition survive?" to "When will it fall apart?"
The Future of the MAGA Coalition
For most of its history, the policy agenda of the MAGA coalition was led by the Populists, who have made up the bulk of Trump’s base since the 2016 Republican Primary. However, anyone following the news since Trump’s second inauguration would know that Musk’s Libertarian faction has taken firm hold of Trump’s policy playbook for the next four years. With the doormat Republican Congress collectively looking wherever Trump points, it is unlikely that anyone in the party, which broadly does not subscribe to Musk’s views, will be able to dissuade the president from getting off the Musk train, or perhaps more appropriately, rocket.
With Trump now back in the White House, his challenger playbook no longer works. He’s the establishment now and has made an enormous number of incompatible commitments to every bloc within his coalition. By definition, Trump will not be able to deliver all of his promises, and delivering for one group is almost certain to negatively impact another.
Which faction is most likely to fracture first? While it’s difficult to predict with certainty, the Populists, Trump’s core base, may be the first to become disillusioned. They supported Trump from the outset, driven by a deep desire for economic revitalization and social mobility in their communities, which have been devastated by deindustrialization, corporate greed, urban decline, opioid addiction, and the loss of industries that once served as their lifelines.
However, with Trump and Musk prioritizing the dismantling of programs that support working-class Americans while simultaneously pushing for trillions in tax cuts that benefit the wealthy and corporations, the inevitable realization will set in. Over time, blue-collar workers and racial minorities may come to understand that Trump’s promises of an “American Golden Age” have not materialized, leading to a potential fracture within the coalition and spelling trouble for Republicans in 2028.
While nothing is certain, the reality is clear: the MAGA coalition is fragile and has never commanded the support of a majority of Americans at the polls. This volatile alliance not only presents challenges for Republicans during election cycles but also threatens their ability to pass any meaningful legislation with their slim majorities in both the House and Senate.
The MAGA coalition's rise highlights deep fractures in American politics, but its future is uncertain. Held together by little more than anti-establishment sentiment, its fragile unity will be tested as Trump faces the realities of governing, potentially unraveling the very movement that brought him back to power.