In rhetoric and now in action, Donald Trump has been called an authoritarian by many commentators and even by those who have previously worked with him in the White House. While many Americans have supported Trump because of these authoritarian tendencies, in new research, Kayla Wolf, Chaerim Kim, Laura Brisbane and Jane Junn determine that the appeal of authoritarian values is different across people’s race and gender. They write that those who enjoy some degree of advantage based on their race and/or gender, such as white men, are more likely to have authoritarian tendencies, while those who are doubly disadvantaged, such as women of color, are the least likely to do so.

From 2017 to 2019, John Kelly served as Chief of Staff for President Donald Trump, with his two-year tenure making him Trump’s longest-serving chief of staff to-date. During the 2024 election campaign, however, this one-time Trump aid warned voters about reelecting him, calling him “certainly an authoritarian.”

Trump may fit the profile of an authoritarian leader, but he is a democratically elected one, as evidenced by his sweeping election win in 2024. In fact, early exit polls indicate that a majority of US voters–particularly majorities of white women, white men, and Latino men–voted for his re-election. His Make America Great Again (MAGA) agenda prioritizes a return to traditional values, renewed support for deeply entrenched gender hierarchies, and the rejection and exclusion of others. Public opinion data show that Right-Wing Authoritarianism (RWA) helps explain the strong support behind Trump and the MAGA agenda—but how it shows up isn’t the same for everyone. The pull of authoritarian values looks different across race and gender and is shaped by who feels that their place in the social order is being challenged.

Right-Wing Authoritarianism in the US context

Right-Wing Authoritarianism (RWA) is all about valuing group authority and uniformity. In turn, people with authoritarian tendencies feel triggered when they perceive a threat to their shared way of life. According to political scientist Karen Stenner, such threats are seen as an affront to what is seen as the normal order of things, in that they threaten “some system of oneness and sameness that makes ‘us’ an ‘us’” and a moralistically good “us” at that. 

“Dictator Day One-4572” (CC BY 2.0) by Geoff Livingston

Importantly, authoritarianism isn’t just a style of leadership – it’s a worldview that can be held by political leaders and members of the public alike. And further, it’s a way of thinking that appeals to American voters differently based on their race and gender, because these factors influence a person’s degree of attachment to the prevailing order of American society. Challenges to the traditional gender or racial hierarchy may feel threatening to those located in a position of privilege within this status quo, thus rendering those individuals especially receptive to authoritarian politics.

However, people are not simply their race or their gender (and in truth they are not only their race-gender category either), but rather they face cross-pressures based on how these parts of their identity come together. With this in mind, we analyze data from the 2022 University of Notre Dame Health of Democracy (NDHOD) Survey to understand how everyday Americans agree with ideas of RWA and how these patterns vary at the intersection of race and gender.

Figure 1 shows how groups of white women, white men, women of color, and men of color agree with different sentiments of Right-Wing Authoritarianism. While conventional “gender gap” literature would suggest that men are more authoritarian than women, these results complicate that story. We find that white women and men are fairly similar in their RWA attitudes and women of color are consistently the least supportive. Individuals’ support for RWA depends on both their gender and race, together.  

Figure 1 – Agreement of RWA items by race-gender groups

The connection between RWA and Making America Great Again

The MAGA agenda seeks to uphold the status quo of white patriarchy and to do that, it calls for a return to conservative values that privilege men in the gender hierarchy and the explicit exclusion of those who do not fit into the racial hierarchy that privileges whiteness. Given that authoritarianism is underpinned by a desire for order, obedience to authority, and hostility toward outgroups, it’s no surprise that the two go hand in hand. The 2022 NDHOD Survey also asked Americans how they felt about specific tenets of the MAGA Agenda, so we compare support for RWA and support for MAGA in Table 1. 

The number presented is the correlation, which shows the extent to which a person’s beliefs about RWA are linked to their support for these different MAGA Agenda items. In social sciences, correlations below 0.1 are considered to show a weak relationship, 0.1 to 0.3 a moderate relationship, and anything above 0.5 a strong relationship. The correlation values between RWA score and each MAGA agenda item ranges from 0.41 to 0.54, suggesting that the relationship between two factors is often moderate to strong. People who support authoritarian values tend to also support the MAGA agenda, and the link between the two is more than just a coincidence. In particular, the data show that people who are loyal to Trump—not just the Republican Party—and see him as the true voice of the MAGA movement are more likely to hold authoritarian views. This is also true for those who deflect blame for the January 6th violence onto the Antifa group. 

Table 1 – Correlation with RWA and Making America Great Again

Race and gender and support for RWA

Taking it a step further, we also consider how the cross-pressures of race and gender differently impact MAGA support. At its core, support for the MAGA agenda and RWA are tied to a person’s social position—whether they are advantaged or disadvantaged within the structures of patriarchy and white supremacy. Just like what we saw with race-gender differences in RWA, Figure 2 shows that white men show the highest support for the MAGA agenda, and white women are not far behind. In both cases of RWA and the MAGA agenda, gender doesn’t create a major divide—at least not among white Americans. Among people of color, in contrast, the gender gap exists; women of color show the least support for the MAGA agenda, while men of color fall between white women and white men.

Figure 2 – MAGA Agenda Score by race-gender groups

A race-gendered authoritarian dynamic

Our research shows that support for authoritarian values and the MAGA agenda is shaped by where people exist in race and gender hierarchies. People who enjoy some degree of advantage based on race and/or gender (i.e., white men, white women, and men of color) are more likely to show authoritarian tendencies, whereas the doubly disadvantaged (i.e., women of color) are the least likely to do so. This authoritarian dynamic prevails among white men and women alike who cling to an idealized version of the country which prioritizes traditional white conservatism.

As the realities of a second Trump term continue to reshape the US political landscape, our research shows that this authoritarian dynamic is shared by many voters–but the extent to which it is shared depends on both voters’ race and gender, and how those attributes interact.

• This article is based on the paper, ‘Support for the MAGA Agenda: Race, Gender, and Authoritarianism’, in The Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and Politics.
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• Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of USAPP – American Politics and Policy, nor the London School of Economics.