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Kayla Wolf

Chaerim Kim

Laura Brisbane

Jane Junn

June 9th, 2025

Trump fits the bill of an authoritarian. But so do many Americans

1 comment

Estimated reading time: 7 minutes

Kayla Wolf

Chaerim Kim

Laura Brisbane

Jane Junn

June 9th, 2025

Trump fits the bill of an authoritarian. But so do many Americans

1 comment

Estimated reading time: 7 minutes

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

RWA Score
A. I am a loyal supporter of Donald Trump above any political party0.50
B. Donald Trump is the true voice of the real American people0.54
C. Joe Biden stole the 2020 presidential Election0.49
D. Democrats often engage in voter fraud0.48
E. The January 6th protest at the US Capitol was justified reaction by patriots0.41
F. Any violence at the January 6th protest at the US Capitol was perpetrated by Antifa0.53
G. The media exaggerated the violence at the January 6th protest at the US capitol0.41

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.


About the author

Kayla Wolf

Kayla Wolf will start as an Assistant Teaching Professor at Northeastern University in the fall of 2025. Her research asks questions about how we develop our political attitudes and ideologies as well as how our race, gender, and class backgrounds influence these attitude formation processes. Her work has been published in the Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and Politics.

Chaerim Kim

Chaerim Kim is a Ph.D. candidate in Political Science and International Relations (POIR) at the University of Southern California. Her research examines gender and racial disparities in U.S. politics at both the candidate and voter levels. Her work has been published in Politics & Gender and the Journal of Race, Ethnicity & Politics.

Laura Brisbane

Laura recently earned her PhD in Political Science and International Relations at the University of Southern California, where she focused on the politics of social welfare provision in the United States. Specifically, her dissertation analyzed the psychology of scarcity in relation to distributive ethics, political attitudes, and policy outcomes. Laura’s latest work focuses on the Abundance Agenda in California public policy, working with the Possibility Lab at UC Berkeley. Her research has been published in Politics & Gender and The Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and Politics.

Jane Junn

Jane Junn is the USC Associates Chair in Social Sciences and a professor of political science and gender studies at the University of Southern California. She studies public opinion, political behavior, and survey methodology, including work on the relationship between education and public participation, Asian American political participation, and gender and politics. Her work has been published in Perspectives on Politics, Politics & Gender, and American Politics Research, among others.

Posted In: Democracy and culture

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