President Donald Trump’s grip on the Republican Party has seemed absolute.
But his consistent disregard for constitutional and societal norms might be leading to genuine fissures within the GOP.
A new report by the nonprofit Public Agenda and the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University, based on focus groups and surveys involving more than 4,500 Americans, identifies an emerging three-part typology within the Republican Party:
- “Trump-First” Republicans who are the core of the MAGA base;
- “Party-First” Republicans, whose partisan loyalties outweigh their personal devotion to Trump; and
- “Constitution-First” Republicans, conservatives who are increasingly uncomfortable with Trump’s behavior in office.
These Constitution-First Republicans—who make up 34 percent of the party—have the potential to be an effective counterweight to the Trump-First Republicans, who make up 29 percent of the GOP.
Unlike Trump-Firsters, a majority of Constitution-First Republicans do not believe the president should have the power to bypass Congress in order to achieve his aims. And while large majorities of all three groups embrace Trump’s election denialism, Constitution-First Republicans were more than three times as likely as Trump-Firsters to believe that “Joe Biden was the lawful winner of the 2020 election” (32 percent versus 9 percent).
What makes this group especially intriguing as reformers within the party is that they are not closet Democrats. “These are not ‘Never-Trumpers’… or leftist Republicans,” says Sarah Bryner, Public Agenda’s Director. In fact, 90 percent of Constitution-First Republicans voted for Trump, and only 2 percent describe themselves as “liberal.”
On the other hand, they are more likely than other Republicans to have warmer views of Democrats, more likely to rely on mainstream news outlets for information, more likely to associate with people who have differing political views, and less likely to feel represented by the Republican Party. This makes them potentially attractive allies for Democrats and independents seeking to oppose the excesses of the Trump administration and pursue political reform.
Dr. Andrew J. Seligsohn is president of Public Agenda, and Dr. Sarah Bryner is Public Agenda’s Director.
This transcript has been edited for length and clarity. The full interview is available at Spotify, YouTube, and iTunes.
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Anne Kim: Congratulations to both of you on this really remarkable and thoughtful report. Before we dig into the details, what prompted this particular line of research?
Andrew Seligsohn: We started this with partners at the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University because of some overlapping interests. At Public Agenda, we’re a research to action organization. Our focus is a strong and healthy democracy, and we believe that one pathway is through new coalitions among people who may not share a policy agenda but do share a concern about the health of the institutions through which we make policy, settle disputes, handle violations of law, et cetera.
From our perspective, we’re a long way from having a working coalition like that, and it’s part of the reason why we’re seeing democratic backsliding now, and why there’s a risk of greater backsliding as we move forward.
We were interested in illuminating people out there who might disagree about many specific policy questions, but who share an interest in rule of law, in civil rights and liberties, and in a free press. Our partners at SNF Agora are also involved in some practical work with right-of-center organizations envisioning what an agenda for a conservative pro-democracy movement might look like. They had some very specific uses for this data, but we think it can serve anyone who’s interested in this broader pro-democracy coalition.
Anne Kim: And your research actually did identify that group of people who could be part of that coalition. The biggest takeaway from this report is that Republican voters are not at all a monolith. There is a sizable share of Republican voters who seem to be pretty uncomfortable with where their party is headed right now, and you uncovered this three-part typology within the GOP. Can you give us a brief overview of these groups?
Sarah Bryner: The origin story for the typology was asking people whether they think the president should be able to ignore court decisions if he believes that doing so is in the nation’s best interest. And the way that people answer that question is extremely revealing and correlated with a lot of other beliefs about democracy.
So the people who say “yes, the president can ignore the courts if he thinks it’s the right thing to do for the country,” those are our “Trump-First” Republicans. That’s just shy of 30 percent of the party. The “Constitution-First” Republicans say “no, even if he thinks that doing so is the right choice, even if I agree with him, he has to follow the rules.” Those are our “Constitution-First” Republicans, and that’s about 34 percent of the population of Republicans.
And then the last group is actually the biggest. These are the people who say, “I’m not sure. Maybe. It depends. Maybe I haven’t thought of it.” These are our “Party-First” Republicans. I will note that in every single group of these Republicans, a vast majority of them voted for Trump. So these are not Never-Trumpers. They are not leftist Republicans. These are Republicans who have backed the president in the past and may continue to do so, but they have these wide divisions based around their feelings about what he’s allowed to do.
Anne Kim: I want to underscore your point that these Constitution-First Republicans in particular are not so-called “RINOs”—Republicans in Name Only. If I remember right from your report, 71 percent of the Constitution-First Republicans said that they are “very conservative” or “conservative,” and 90 percent voted for Trump, right?
Sarah Bryner: That’s exactly right.
Anne Kim: So let’s start getting a little deeper into the contrast between the Constitutional-First Republicans and the Trump-Firsters. And the particular fault line I want to ask you about is over a third term for Trump. There was a pretty big difference about whether he should have a third term, first of all, and secondly, whether to amend the Constitution to let that happen. Talk a little bit more about those findings.
Sarah Bryner: The interesting thing about that question was that it was actually a survey experiment. Half the group saw one question, and the other half saw a different question. And the first version was, “Do you think the Constitution should be amended to allow for presidents to run for a third term?” The second version was, “Do you think Trump should be allowed to run for a third term?” And among the Trump-First Republicans, their degree of support for amending the Constitution was indeed higher than most of the other groups. But when you edited that question to make it Trump-specific, support for a third term for him jumped up by around 30 percentage points. So that just underscores the naming of that group as the Trump-First Republicans. They really want him.
But among the Constitution-First Republicans, there was essentially no difference in how they answered that question, regardless of whether it was the Constitution or Trump. It was something in the 30 percent range who said, “yes, we should amend the Constitution” and “yes, Trump should be allowed to run for a third term.” But by and large, they oppose that change, regardless of whether it would favor Trump.
Anne Kim: So it’s about the loyalty to the man versus loyalty to the idea that is shaping these differences. That’s really interesting. Another really interesting attitudinal split that you discovered between the Constitution-First Republicans and the Trump-Firsters was their attitudes toward the opposing party. You asked if they thought that members of the opposing party, “lacked the traits to be considered fully human and behave like animals.” And the difference in response was pretty stunning.
Sarah Bryner: That’s actually a common question that people get asked in these kinds of surveys, and I personally am always really astonished by how strongly people dislike folks in the out group. But in this case, it sort of fell so cleanly that the Republicans in the Trump-First group think far less positively about Democrats, whereas Constitution-First Republicans hold a more warm view towards people in the Democratic Party.
Andrew Seligsohn: I might even note that the Constitution-First Republicans have a warmer view of Democrats than Democrats do of Republicans. It’s like Democrats are in between those two groups of Republicans on this measure. And for me, part of the point of this research is to break down stereotypes people might have about folks they don’t agree with or don’t see themselves as being in the same party as. And this seemed like a really good example.
There is diversity of opinion among Republicans about Democrats, but I think the Constitution-First Republicans really do evidence a lot more willingness to engage and to take seriously the humanity and the legitimacy of other views, than is the case certainly for Trump-First Republicans, but also for Democrats taken as a whole. We might see that same level of diversity among Democrats if we did a parallel study, which we’d love to do, but if you look at Democrats as a whole, it’s not as if they’re somehow outperforming all groups of Republicans on these kinds of measures.
Anne Kim: You also found that the Constitution-Firsters were more likely to talk to people who aren’t Republicans, whereas the Trump-Firster crowd seemed to be a little bit more locked in with their own crowd. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about that connection between who people associate with and the rigidity—for lack of a better word—of their views.
Sarah Bryner: That finding is one that I come back to a lot because, like Andrew just said, the folks in the Democratic Party also operate in very siloed communities. Democrats mostly talk to Democrats. And it’s true that Republicans, regardless of their attitude about the Constitution, mostly talk to other Republicans.
But the Constitution-First Republicans are the most likely to talk to people who hold different views. They also are the most likely to consume print media, at least among Republicans. They are the least likely to consume all of their media online or in podcasts, which we know can provide viewers with exactly what they want to hear. So there is something to be said for these Constitution-First Republicans seeking out a more diverse community of beliefs, and then also operating in spaces where they might encounter information that cuts against their policy preferences or their partisan preferences.
I return to that as a source of optimism even though I’m not sure where the causal arrow goes. Are these people seeking out more information because that’s just in their nature or does the information help shape their attitudes?
But either way, I think that it is important as a society to remember that it can be restorative to have conversations with people who disagree with you.
Andrew Seligsohn: I think it is really important, as Sarah just noted, to recognize that these are descriptive statistics. We don’t know whether people who have that openness are more inclined to engage, or whether that engagement is driving their views. But either way, we can see that there’s some positive interaction effect that happens when people are engaging.
And of course, it just makes sense, right? You encounter different ideas, and they might shift your own ideas. And the combination of the media environments people are existing in, the social environments they’re existing in—we’ve lost many of the places where people would historically have connected across difference.
We’re much more sorted geographically than we used to be. Local news coverage, which tends not to be so partisan, has largely disappeared in this country or has at least been seriously hobbled. It’s just so much more likely that people find themselves in bubbles.
Anne Kim: I want to keep going on that point you raised, Andrew, about media and echo chambers and bubbles, because this is a question that included Democrats and independents and where they get their news. And this was a revelation to me, too. The first takeaway from your survey is that the so-called mainstream media is really fighting for attention, even among Democrats. I was really surprised that only 10 percent get their news from The New York Times when it seems like all that anybody talks about inside the Beltway is The New York Times, but that’s clearly not the case. But on the other side, a third said they get their news from Fox. So there’s still something of a GOP monoculture in the news. Talk a little bit about the differing media environments that these groups are finding themselves in and how you think that relates to the attitudes you see, particularly on the extremes of both groups.
Sarah Bryner: We ran focus groups with different groups of Republicans over the summer, and it was immediately clear to me that the people in the Constitution-First group were just much more likely to consume what I would think of as traditional media: newspapers, local news, those types of places where you can hear information that might present you with facts that you hadn’t heard elsewhere or that you don’t even like compared to other groups of Republicans. And that plays out in the data.
I do think Fox does have a special role in the Republican party compared to Democratic sources. But one finding that struck me is just the vast number of media sources that are out there. We asked people, what podcasts do you listen to? Which online independent journalists do you follow? You can think of thousands of names that people listed in response, which is just crazy to think about when we had a country 40 years ago where you watched one of three mainstream news shows in the evening.
I think that this diversity potentially has its upsides. You can learn about things you might not have learned about. But it also has the risk of allowing people to select into information that supports their pre-existing beliefs. And what makes me especially nervous is that when you look at younger Americans, Millennials and Gen Z Americans, they’re much, much more likely to list online media as one of their primary sources. And as we all know, online media lacks the verified nature of print media. You don’t know how they’re sourcing. You don’t know the fact-checking process.
Anne Kim: If you are a defender of democracy, whether you’re a Democrat or Republican, and now you know the existence of this group of Constitution-First Republicans, what do you guys recommend should be done to engage this group and or activate them if they don’t like what they’re seeing within their own party or within the country at large?
Andrew Seligsohn: That is a very tough question, particularly in a two-party system. In other kinds of systems, there may be straightforward systemic ways that these kinds of coalitions can form. Parties in a legislature who don’t have the same policy agenda will still vote together on certain issues. But we’re pretty stuck in a two-party system where you end up at election time having a tough choice between maybe somebody you don’t think upholds the norms of a democracy, but whose policy views you agree with, or somebody whom you disagree with on every important policy question to you, but whom you think maybe cares more about democratic norms. And that’s just a tough situation.
I think we should be looking, especially at the local level and at the state level, at structural reforms that change how voting works, how legislatures are constituted, et cetera, whether that’s ranked-choice voting, whether it’s multi-member districts and proportional representation, whether it’s top-two primaries. There are a lot of different models, and in different places, different things might make sense. They create different ways for people to engage and interact and work together that a straight up two-party system tends to block.
I think a second thing is to engage in more informal ways, like taking seriously the possibility that you could have a conversation with somebody who identifies as a Republican or a Democrat if you’re the other, and the possibility that you might actually agree about some things if you give it the possibility; like consuming media that you’re not used to consuming—spending the time to go look at news sources, even if you think they’re inaccurate, to understand what other people are seeing and how they might be forming their views.
I think ultimately we need solutions at scale, but I also think those will only work if there’s a background culture in which people are prepared to act differently than most of us have been acting in our political lives.
One of the things that’s shown through in this research is that everybody’s worried about the role of big money dominating politics and dominating the media. And we’ve been exploring research at Public Agenda that looks at small donor matching programs, which is a way to give greater voice to small donors in our system and maybe crowd out the role of big money. Things like that that open up greater space for ordinary people and don’t have a partisan coloration necessarily hold a lot of promise.
Anne Kim: Your survey found a few policy ideas everyone seemed to agree upon, like term limits and getting money out of politics. Is there potential to move even the Trump-Firsters toward this broader coalition?
Sarah Bryner: Absolutely. We all are very unhappy—Democrats, Republicans, independents—with the state of democracy. Nobody is standing on the street shouting about how amazing everything in politics is right now.
And I think that even with structural reforms that don’t have broad partisan approval, people are curious and interested in at least exploring some of them. I think that steps in the direction of structural reforms, especially those that are actionable, like small donor matching programs, or more mail-in voting, can help increase trust, unite us, and make the kinds of changes that people want to see so that they’re willing to say, “OK, the election was fair. I don’t agree with these policies, but I don’t think you’re a terrible person. Let’s get to the table and talk about the changes that we can make.” So I would start with the structural reforms because there is the support for it among everybody.
Anne Kim: I love that this conversation has been a pretty hopeful one, all things considered. The last question I want to ask is what your research has meant to you in terms of your own thinking about the strength of American democracy and the faith Americans may still have in a constitutional system of government?
Sarah Bryner: I had the pleasure of running our focus groups this summer, and one thing that I took out of those was that people do care. People do have thoughts about the country. I think we’re so willing to assume that people are ignorant if we don’t agree with them, that they’re dumb and haven’t thought about things fully, or they’re brainwashed. That was not the case with the individuals I spoke with. These folks had deep feelings and oftentimes well thought-out arguments behind the attitudes that they have. And that gave me a lot of hope.
I think that that will leave a lasting impression with me—just how reasoned, how educated, how deeply committed most Americans are to the idea of a healthy democracy. We might disagree about the details. We certainly might disagree about the policies, but there is a care there that I think is held by so many people that I want to hold on to after we shut the books on this report and move into further research.
Andrew Seligsohn: I totally agree with Sarah about what’s present in the citizenry and in the electorate and the possibilities that creates. Nonetheless, we find ourselves in this backsliding moment.
I think what we learned should give us the sense that there is a possible other path, but it will require a tremendous amount of practical work, including different kinds of thinking about who our allies need to be and with whom we need to be prepared to work so that we can get back to a politics that is focused more on policy disagreements, which are legitimate and appropriate in a democracy, and less on the question of whether we will have democratic institutions at all.
