Topline results and crosstabs for the poll can be found at www.umass.edu/poll 

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The MAGA base that has helped build Republican power in the U.S. for the past decade may be showing signs of cracking, while several policies associated with democratic socialism have considerably broader appeal than the DSA label itself, according to the latest national University of Massachusetts Amherst Poll.

The survey, conducted Aug. 21-26, has found a 9-percentage point drop among Republicans who identify with the MAGA movement since the last survey was conducted in March. The most significant drop—6 percentage points—came among those who reported only “somewhat” identified as MAGA, while those who “very much” identified as MAGA fell 3 percentage points.

The poll found that the Republicans most likely to identify as MAGA were those who attained a high school degree or less, those making less than $40,000 a year, and those over the age of 55. Among moderate Republicans, there was a nearly even split, with 51% identifying as MAGA and 49% not, and only 16% of moderates said they were “very much” MAGA.

“In just 10 short years, Donald Trump and his Make America Great Again movement have radically reshaped the Republican Party, with the Grand Old Party now reflecting President Trump’s agenda, ideology, and worldview,” says Tatishe Nteta, provost professor of political science at UMass Amherst and director of the poll. “However, in the wake of President Trump’s decision to attack Iran, his failure to successfully address the affordability crisis, and his reluctance to release all of the information associated with his one-time friend, Jeffrey Epstein, a number of prominent members of the MAGA movement, including Tucker Carlson, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Candace Owens, have broken with the president and renounced their allegiance to MAGA. While a majority of Republicans continue to say they identify at least somewhat with the MAGA movement, that number has decreased by 9 percentage points since we last polled in March. With no end in sight to the nation’s high prices or the war in Iran, and with prominent conservative commentators continuing to challenge the president, the question is whether these disagreements are simply temporary cracks in the MAGA foundation or the beginning of a more fundamental unraveling of the movement.”

When—if ever—was America “great?”

The latest UMass Poll also asked respondents a question that goes to the heart of the MAGA movement: when was the United States its greatest?

“Since Donald Trump descended the golden escalator in New York City and announced his candidacy for president by declaring that he would ‘make America great again,’ critics of Trump and the MAGA movement have wondered what golden age they envision as the ideal to which America should return. Our poll provides an answer,” Nteta says. “Republicans, conservatives, Trump voters, and strong MAGA identifiers are all significantly more likely to say the 1980s were the decade when America was at its greatest. Given Trump’s own emergence as a national celebrity during the 1980s and the decade’s influence on his political worldview, it may be less than surprising that MAGA’s vision of making America great again looks so much like a return to the America of the 1980s.”

“Republicans disproportionately focus on two decades: the 1980s and the 1950s,” says Jesse Rhodes, professor of political science at UMass Amherst and co-director of the poll. “These choices make sense. In essence, the ‘Make America Great Again’ slogan is about nostalgia, a call to return to an idealized past. For many Republicans, these two decades embody this mythologized past. The 1980s were a triumphalist era, in which the Reagan and Bush administrations celebrated American power and patriotism. The 1950s are even more idealized in the American imagination as a period of economic prosperity and social consensus. In reality, of course, neither decade matches the mythology. But these imagined eras present an appealing contrast to today’s hyperpolarized politics.” 

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“It is perhaps fitting that Donald Trump’s political movement would look back fondly upon both the decade of his childhood—the 1950s—and the decade during which he first emerged as a household name—the 1980s,” adds Alexander Theodoridis, associate professor of political science and co-director of the UMass Poll. 

Raymond La Raja, professor of political science at UMass Amherst and co-director of the poll, notes that while the 1980s was the most popular decade named in the survey among Republicans, it wasn’t actually the most popular choice among all of the poll’s 1,000 respondents—pluralities of all respondents (20%), Democrats (32%), independents (26%) and African Americans (32%) said that America “never was great.”

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“The fight over America’s past may be just as polarized as the fight over its future,” La Raja says. “Fully 41% of liberals say America was never great, compared with just 4% of conservatives. There is also a striking generational divide: 32% of Americans under 30 say America was never great, compared with only 11% of those over 55. And the sentiment is particularly strong among those closest to the democratic socialist movement, as 46% of Americans who identify very strongly with DSA—Democratic Socialists of America—say America was never great.”

“Given the politicization of American greatness and the record levels of political polarization in the country, these findings may not be entirely surprising,” Nteta says. “But they do reveal a striking divide over not only when America was at its best, but whether it has ever lived up to the promise of its founding ideals—and provide an important window into the very different ways Americans view the nation’s past, its present, and even its future.”
 

DSA’s ascension among Democrats

In addition to surveying the state of MAGA among Republicans, the new UMass Poll also investigated the views on policies aligned with democratic socialism and the rising DSA movement among Democrats.

“To date, seven Democratic incumbent members of the U.S. House have been defeated in their party’s primary in 2026, an unusually high number by recent standards,” Nteta says. “In many of these races, longtime incumbents have fallen to younger and more progressive challengers, including candidates associated with the Democratic Socialists of America movement. While these primary defeats do not necessarily signal a wholesale ideological transformation of the Democratic Party, they may be an early indication that the party’s voters are becoming more receptive to a more progressive agenda and willing to challenge the Democratic establishment.

“Our poll provides additional evidence of this possibility,” Nteta continues. “While identification with the DSA remains unpopular among Americans overall, 54% of Democrats say they identify at least somewhat with the movement, including majorities of women (56%), young people (68%), college graduates (63% college grad, 69% postgrad), liberals (73%) and African Americans (56%), key members of the Democratic base. The question now is whether these primary results and the views of Democratic voters represent isolated signs of discontent or the early stages of a broader transformation of the Democratic Party. If these results are indeed a canary in the coal mine, the message for Democratic leaders is clear: they should be paying close attention to what their voters are telling them or risk facing the same fate as the incumbents who were defeated this year.”

“Although the Democratic Socialists of America have become a major topic of conversation among political pundits and those highly engaged in politics, many Americans are still unfamiliar with the movement and don’t have strong feelings about it,” explains Rhodes. “Among those who do, the most common attitudes are fear and concern about creeping ‘socialism’ or ‘communism’ on the left. That said, others who are familiar with the DSA endorse its self-proclaimed efforts to redistribute wealth and check the power of corporations, donors, and elites. In this period of uncertainty and change in American society, it should be no surprise that some Americans are attracted to left-wing politics.

“A majority supports important planks of the DSA platform,” Rhodes says, “including government-run health care (53%), increased taxes on wealthy Americans (60%), and a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants who meet citizenship requirements and break no laws (59%). A plurality of Americans also supports ending U.S. military aid to Israel (49%). Of course, some of the DSA’s planks—like allowing noncitizens to vote (55% oppose)—are very unpopular, but the popularity of some of the DSA’s platform planks explains why some individual politicians associated with the movement have been able to draw significant support and even win some notable elections. These figures have strategically emphasized the DSA’s more popular proposals while downplaying its more extreme planks. I anticipate that more Democrats will selectively adopt some of the DSA’s popular proposals to court voters, many of whom seem open to specific left-wing policies, if not the DSA’s platform in full.”

“The relative popularity of these policies may help explain why DSA-affiliated candidates, such as Michigan’s Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, have sought to distance themselves from the DSA label and instead make these policies the centerpiece of their campaigns,” says Nteta. “Whether this strategy will resonate with voters on Election Day remains to be seen, but what is clear is that the DSA label and the signature policies associated with the movement occupy very different places in the minds of Americans.”
 

Methodology

This University of Massachusetts Amherst Poll of 1,000 respondents nationally was conducted by YouGov Aug. 21-26. The respondents were matched to a sampling frame on gender, age, race and education. The sampling frame was constructed by stratified sampling from the full 2023 American Community Survey (ACS) 1-year sample with selection within strata by weighted sampling with replacements (using the person weights on the public use file).

The matched cases were weighted to the sampling frame using propensity scores. The matched cases and the frame were combined, and a logistic regression was estimated for inclusion in the frame. The propensity score function included age, gender, race/ethnicity, years of education, region and home ownership. The propensity scores were grouped into deciles of the estimated propensity score in the frame and post-stratified according to these deciles.

The weights were then raked (iterative proportional fitting) on 2024 presidential vote choice and post-stratified using a four-way stratification of gender, age (4-categories), race (4-categories) and education (4-categories) to produce the final weight.

The margin of error of this poll is 3.5%.

Topline results and crosstabs for the poll can be found at www.umass.edu/poll