A Top G.O.P. Pollster on Trump 2024, QAnon and What Republicans Really Want
About this episode
Republican pollster Kristen Soltis Anderson explains how she reads her own party. Her polling finds many Republicans now see politics as ensuring national survival rather than enacting policy, driven by feelings of cultural, religious and economic siege and loss of power — aimed at the media, universities, tech firms and employers, and producing demand for leaders who 'fight.' She discusses distrust of institutions, low-information environments, QAnon, belief in election fraud and January 6, and how elite cues reinforce conspiracism. Trump's appeal, she argues, blends combativeness, entertainment and authenticity, which imitators struggle to copy. The party has avoided a real post-2020 autopsy, hopes to grow among non-college and working-class voters including voters of color, but faces tension between economic populism and old fiscal conservatism — and a durable millennial drift toward Democrats.