KJS 5.26

How long can you not deliver and still be followed…

If you didn’t buy MAGA (this author) you might see the recent primaries in stronghold states and wonder – what *could be the appeal now – with everything that’s been done.

*That’s so progressive, isn’t it? To analyze another voting demographic in a patronizing manner…

But it’s on the news everyday in plain English, full frontal corruption and self enrichment, hypocrisy, hiding of the truth, breaking of anything without a plan. Putting his name and face on things that don’t belong to him. Taking our tax money, and just giving it back to his friends.

Why would anyone try to give themself immunity unless they had something to hide and/or intended to do further damage.

I mean, c’mon. How can anyone trust this administration? Protecting pedofiles and abusing women.

Is it the way they achieve power – this strong man approach – does that create a lock-in effect…

…How patronizing of me to guess why people believe.

Political beliefs are not about ‘catching up’; they are value based and cultural.

What shows, the signals we send to society, is entirely behavioral.

We’re all looking for the truth, and our own truth. This still holds true. And what is going on now. No matter how dug in we are to an idea, it is being tested.

Instead of getting angered by the other parties voting behavior, we could take time to better understand where they are coming from and communicate by re-establishing trust.

What does the research actually tell us about why MAGA holds — and what does that mean for those trying to reach them.

Let’s begin with that question that even serious strategists keep getting wrong.

It goes something like this: why are working-class Trump supporters still with him? Tariffs are eating their savings. The deficit is ballooning. The government they voted to shrink is bigger. The corruption is so brazen it doesn’t even bother hiding anymore.

Those seem to be empiric reasons for retreating from a loyal position.

Do not assume loyalty as rational or a choice. Look at o your own loyalty to something. Do you objectively weigh inputs and outputs and remain when the math works…

It’s not how loyalty goes. Not how humans work.

The research — not opinion — tells us something even more precise, and useful, than the usual explanations.

Coalition Has a Different Definition
More in Common spent ten months — April 2025 through January 2026 — surveying over 10,000 Trump voters. The most comprehensive study of the coalition ever. What they found demolishes the monolith narrative.
Only 38 percent of Trump voters say being MAGA is important to them.

The coalition has four distinct segments: MAGA Hardliners (29%), Anti-Woke Conservatives (21%), Mainline Republicans (30%), and the Reluctant Right (20%).

The coalition’s internal differences run through nearly every major issue. On democratic norms, the Reluctant Right insists on constitutional limits while majorities of other segments are ready to test those boundaries.

The Reluctant Right is already leaving. Confidence in their choice has been dropping since April 2025. A quarter of them say they regret their vote.

So when you ask “why are they still with him,” you need to specify who. The math looks completely different depending on which group you’re talking about. Three of the four are moveable. One is not.

Let’s talk about the one that isn’t.

It’s Not Loyalty. It’s Identity Fusion.
MAGA Hardliners — the fiery core, mostly white Gen Xers and Boomers — are not loyal to Trump the way you’re loyal to a sports team. That framing is too loose. What the research describes is identity fusion. Their sense of self and Trump’s are the same object.

93 percent of MAGA Hardliners say they trust Trump more than all or most other sources of information. That number is not a measure of confidence. It’s a measure of melding. There’s zero gap between “what I believe” and “what Trump says.” He isn’t a politician. He’s the narrator of the world they live in.

When identity fuses at that level, evidence is irrelevant. Don’t even use evidence

Pro tip: People are not stupid. You can’t disprove someone’s identity with a fact. You can’t talk people out of who they are.

To an observer, a leader who is visibly, frontally corrupt should generate defection. But to someone whose identity is fused with that leader, corruption reads as strength. In fact, it’s validation that he operates outside the rules designed to keep people like him — and by extension, people like them — in line. The Access Hollywood tape. 91 criminal charges. $2 trillion deficit. Whatever. Every attack is evidence of how dangerous he is to the people trying to stop him, confirming: yep, he’s still the right guy. I’ll follow his plan – even wait out the pain.

Dignity Transaction
Here’s a variable most strategists under-weigh. It’s not economic. It’s dignitary.

Meaning, 84 percent of Trump voters believe Trump “respects people like me.” Only a quarter feel respected by Democrats.

This is not about calculating trade policy. They’re people who feel condescended to — by institutions, by media, by a cultural establishment that signals their values are slow or backward, their concerns are really bigotry, or whatever about their way of life.

Trump offers something no position can: the feeling of being seen. Of mattering. There’s someone in power who speaks my language and doesn’t apologize for it.

One Hardliner in the study described Trump as “a gigantic orange flashing middle finger, and I love it.” This quote does a ton of analytical work. She’s not describing policy. She’s describing a gesture. Directed at the people who have made her feel small. That gesture is worth more to her than a lower grocery bill.

The dignity transaction is real. At least right now. At least until something breaks the frame. It’s meeting a real need. You can’t compete with it by being right about tariffs.

Sunk Costs
Is it a form of shame that keeps them in? The research confirms it.

This isn’t just a sunk cost though; it’s a specific psychological architecture. One Dr. Brianna Migliore has written about in clinical terms. Once people have invested time, identity, and public commitment to a movement, withdrawing feels more costly than continuing — even as the evidence of harm stacks up.

These are not small investments. Years of Thanksgiving arguments. Facebook fights. Donations. Hats. For some of them, shockingly, still January 6. Walking away from Trump is admitting that all of that was wrong. It’s losing your reputation, a moral reckoning that costs status, belonging, and your story.

This is documented across decades of psychology research. The more you’ve invested, the harder the exit. And the public nature of MAGA allegiance makes the sunk cost unusually high. The performance of loyalty is becoming its own trap.

Information Fog
There’s a second mechanism that suppresses doubt once identity fusion and sunk cost have done the heavy lifting: The (fog of) media environment.

MAGA Hardliners predominantly consume hyperpartisan media that reinforces existing views. That’s not just a liberal critique. It’s a structural description of how doubt gets killed before it can form. To question Trump is to risk ostracism from the community. There’s the enforcement mechanism.

The result is a closed epistemic system. Every piece of contrary evidence arrives pre-tagged like enemy propaganda so you can’t defect to a world you can’t see. The system actively hides that world.

Apocalyptic Frame
Another variable most analysts forget which is, arguably, the most ‘load-bearing’.

MAGA Hardliners are animated by the belief that God is on their side in an existential struggle between good and evil.

Research from Political Psychology in 2024 found that Trump’s most loyal supporters perceive his leadership with religious parallels — including elements of infallibility. His gospel, as Brad Onishi put it, is spread through houses of worship every Sunday.

When the frame is spiritual warfare, policy outcomes stop mattering. Debt, cruelty, corruption — these become tests of faith, or necessary tribulation, or the price of winning a war that is bigger than any election cycle.

You don’t leave your faith because the economy is bad. You recommit. Suffering has meaning. That’s what religion does. That’s what MAGA has become for its hardest core.

What Does This Mean For Communicators
Three things:

-First, stop trying to reach Hardliners with evidence. The framework that makes evidence persuasive — shared epistemic ground, openness to being wrong — doesn’t exist. Spending resources here is an error.

-Second, three segments are moving. Reluctant Right voters are already in motion. Anti-Woke Conservatives and Mainline Republicans are watching outcomes with less religious conviction and more pragmatism. These groups have lower identity fusion, less sunk cost at stake. Reach out — but not with condescension, not with “you were fooled,” and not with policy papers. Try dignity and listening. Be vulnerable and authentic and you have a chance at rebuilding trust. You will land where it doesn’t require them to humiliate themselves to get there.

-Third, the exit problem isn’t loyalty. It’s landing.
People don’t stay in failing relationships because they love the relationship. They stay because they can’t see where they’d go. The question isn’t “how can we make Trump less appealing.” He’s fused with their identity. You can’t win there. Make the question: where do people land when the frame finally breaks? That break is coming. It comes for all movements. Economic pain accumulates. Cognitive dissonance finds its tipping point.

The question is going to be: is there something waiting for me and how much does it cost to get there?

Build a safe frame that doesn’t require humiliation to re-enter. Consider politics as dignity for people who’ve been left out — before any conversation about their choices. MAGA loyalty isn’t stupidity, or pure racism, or mass psychosis. It’s a set of specific, documentable psychological and social mechanisms — each one meeting a real human need.

You break through by building something that meets those needs better. Something that offers status without hierarchy. Community without enemies. Identity that doesn’t require a monster to define itself against.

^^^

PS. Helpful Segmentation

Segment	% of Trump Voters	Loyalty Driver	Exit Probability
MAGA Hardliners	29%	Identity fusion + religious frame	Near zero
Anti-Woke Conservatives	21%	Cultural grievance	Low but moveable on economics
Mainline Republicans	30%	Border + stability	Moderate — watching outcomes
Reluctant Right	20%	No good alternative	Actively fraying