American Identity
21 August 2023
Polling Firm: YouGov
Sample Size: n=800 registered Republican voters
Fieldwork Dates: August 8-14, 2023
Margin of Error: +/- 3.7 for registered Republican voter avg.
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Attitudes and Experiences of Republicans in America – Part Two: Identity and Gender
November 7, 2023
Topic
American Identity
Our national survey of 800 registered Republican voters highlights the nuances in beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors of Republicans by their self-reported ideology (moderate, conservative, and very conservative) and gender.
Key Takeaways
- Republicans are most likely to identify their American identity and their family role as important parts of their identity.
- Very conservative Republicans appear to have a stronger attachment to their group identities than less conservative Republicans.
- Republicans find belonging in faith groups, local neighborhood, and workplaces.
- More conservative voters find belonging in their faith group or political community, while moderates find more belonging in their local neighborhood and workplaces.
- More conservative Republican voters are more pessimistic and worried about their place in the future.
- Republicans who identify as “very conservative” have less optimism about America’s present and future compared to Republicans who identify as “conservative” or “moderate.”
- More conservative voters are also worried that they will be left behind given the rapid pace of change in American society.
- Conservative voters have distinct characteristics:
- More conservative Republican voters have slightly lower levels of trust in institutions overall, such as in American corporations and the military. However, moderate Republicans have less confidence in the Supreme Court compared to more conservative Republicans.
- More conservative Republicans are also more likely to share political content on social media compared to Republican primary voters as a whole. They also are more likely to tune into Fox, Newsmax, talk radio, and Truth Social.
88%
of Republicans say “Being American” is an important or very important part of their identity.
21%
of “very conservative” Republicans are worried they will be left behind given the rapid pace of change, compared to 10% of “conservative” Republicans.
83%
of Republican women say religion is very important of somewhat important, compared to 67% of Republican men.
Overview
As the 2024 Republican primary kicks off, polling and political commentary are naturally focused on exploring which candidates Republican voters support. There is an obvious and important logic to this approach—knowing which candidate people support is a good predictor of how people will vote, and any organization interested in political outcomes in America wants to track and influence what candidates gain support among various segments of the population.
Yet at More in Common, while we too are interested in this question, we are also interested in the core beliefs, attitudes, behaviors, and preferences that shape Republican voters’ candidate choices—which can get lost in commentary that often simply classifies voters into Candidate X voter vs. Candidate Y voter.
In August, we conducted a survey of 800 registered Republican voters to seek to answer these questions. We released part one of our research on “Attitudes and Experiences of Republicans in America” which explored the identities, priorities, and places of belonging of the Republican electorate.
In this report, we used the same survey data to dive deeper into the Republican electorate. In the first section, we look at differences in Republicans based on their self-reported political ideology (moderate, conservative, or very conservative). In the second part, we turn our attention to Republican women and how they differ from Republican men.
While some of our insights align with trends of American women in general—such as that women tend to be more religious than men—our insights show there is nuance and underlying differences between what is shaping female and male Republican voters.
As our national news continues to become saturated with election coverage and polling, we hope this report provides an opportunity to uncover the complexities and differences in what shapes our identities as Americans.
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