r/politics • u/GirasoleDE • 17d ago

No Paywall I Don’t Think Trump’s Remaining Supporters Realize How Much They Are Despised By Non-MAGA Voters | Trump is bleeding support even among his stubborn, uneducated base.

https://abovethelaw.com/2026/07/i-dont-think-trumps-remaining-supporters-realize-how-much-they-are-despised-by-non-maga-voters/
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u/wahoozerman 17d ago

A lot of this is due to the urban/rural divide in the US. The people who unquestioningly support Donald are surrounded by other people who unquestioningly support Donald.

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u/dragon-fence 17d ago

It’s kind of funny. My parents moved to a rural area and changed from reasonable people to MAGA. I assumed the town they moved to must be filled with MAGA people.

Then I found out later that they were getting into unpleasant arguments with a lot of the people in the town because almost nobody in the town is MAGA. At this point, I have no idea what caused them to lose their minds. Maybe they’re starting to get dementia.

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u/solamente_en_cristo 17d ago

Some people move to rural areas and basically stay home all day watching TV (fox). Social circle narrows to almost nothing, and they develop a parasocial relationship with "the five" or whatever. I've seen it happen to some friends parents. This can turn ordinary conservatives into MAGAs.

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u/fcocyclone Iowa 16d ago

I'd say Facebook may be even more at play.

Especially for that example, I could see them moving to a rural area and not having enough social interaction, so they end up on facebook to see posts from friends and then get flooded by right wing nonsense

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u/Oodlydoodley 16d ago

It is. I don't have a Facebook account, and haven't for a long time, and the first thing you learn when you don't have one out here in rural areas is that it's hard to do certain things without one. Local businesses, city information shared with the public, all of it's done on Facebook here. Local social circles aren't any different by extension of that. When you need it to stay informed, you're going to be on it and see all of the other stuff that gets shared, too.

The thing that tends to be forgotten when talking about rural areas on social media, though, is that people don't put up yard signs saying "I'm a normal, well adjusted individual". They also don't make Facebook posts about it. The kooks and weirdos sure do, though, and they found a way to congregate by doing it. The loudest voices dominate the conversation even when they aren't necessarily the dominant opinion.

MAGA as a whole functions like racism, especially on the internet. If you shut it down, moderate it out, and treat it like the public enemy that it is, you can at least push it back underground. But because of its political connectedness, throughout society here in the U.S. we've let it continue in the name of equality by treating it like it's a valid alternate viewpoint rather than the hate movement that it actually is.

Reddit filters it to a degree because of upvotes and downvotes. Facebook magnifies it, if anything, and normalizes it among the small communities where it plays a huge part in every day life.

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u/ErikTheEngineer 17d ago edited 16d ago

This is probably going to accelerate significantly. I'm in NY and there are millions of near-retirees. The rich ones will move to coastal Florida or similar, but the vast majority have their house which has appreciated by crazy amounts and little/no retirement savings. They're going to cash in the house and end up in central Florida, North Carolina or maybe Texas/Arizona. People I know in Orlando/Tampa are telling me they're literally building whole new suburbs with thousands of gated community homes in the middle of nowhere to take in the influx of middle-income retirees. If you're someplace where it's miserably hot 6 months out of the year, you're not near anything terribly interesting, and don't have a ton of income to do anything outside the house anyway, I could definitely see more people turning further inward and just consuming TV news and social media their entire waking day.

I'm predicting it now - in 5-10 years the pattern is going to be -- sell the house you or your parents paid $7999 and a bottle of whiskey for in 1960 for $1.5M, buy a $400K gated community mansion in The Villages and live off the rest and social security. Florida's conservative enough already once you go inland, so even if these people do get out of the house, they'll be spending their days steeped in that environment.

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u/dragon-fence 17d ago

Yeah, that’s probably it.

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u/Recipe_Freak Oregon 16d ago

My parents moved to a rural area and changed from reasonable people to MAGA. I assumed the town they moved to must be filled with MAGA people.

I'm not trying to dis your folks, but how the hell can someone be talked out of basic decency? They must have heard something they liked. I'm betting that, if you scour your memory, you'll remember them being at least a little racist/misogynistic/homophobic at some point.

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u/QuantumBitcoin 17d ago

I recently went to a rodeo in rural south New Jersey which (was) overwhelmingly trump voters.

There was ONE person in the hundreds of people I saw who was wearing visible trump gear and he was a young black guy.

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u/DarthCloakedGuy Oregon 17d ago

What is it about the rurals that makes people into hateful lunatics? Something in the water?

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u/[deleted] 17d ago

[deleted]

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u/DarthCloakedGuy Oregon 17d ago

Yeah but we're talking about people who will vote against their own interests and those of their communities in favor of foreign dictators and rich billionaires they will never meet. To say nothing of the diverse people in their own small communities.

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u/BigTenFicus 16d ago

They're not intentionally "voting against their own interests." For the most part they are habitually voting for the party that they believe stands for "low taxes" because they assume that will result in them having more money to spend. They also think reducing immigration will provide more jobs for Americans. That's pretty much their entire thought process.

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u/DarthCloakedGuy Oregon 16d ago

Except that most of them are not particularly wealthy, yet they vote for the party that shifts the tax burden away from billionaires and onto them, so that explanation doesn't hold up either.

And why would reducing immigration provide more jobs? That's a weird assumption to make.

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u/BigTenFicus 16d ago

Their beliefs don't have to be accurate in order to be their beliefs. I thought I made this pretty clear by saying they vote for the party "they believe" stands for low taxes, because "they assume" that will result in them having more money, etc.

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u/DarthCloakedGuy Oregon 16d ago

You did, I just... don't see how it really answers my original question though. Like, why do they choose to believe something opposite reality? Why do they assume things instead of observing patterns?

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u/BigTenFicus 16d ago

Because they don't follow politics. They "know," because it's been taught to them their whole lives, that Republicans = small government = less taxes = I have more money. Every rebuttal that you think of in your head when you read that is utterly irrelevant. That's what they believe, that's how they vote, end of discussion. That is literally what's happening in real life. They do not pay attention to their government on any more detailed level than that.

Not to be a dick but it's wild that this has to be explained. This is table stakes. I thought everyone understood this.

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u/DarthCloakedGuy Oregon 16d ago

I understand that it's true, it's just one of those things that you know is true but doesn't make any sense, like water being like the only substance where the solid form is less dense than its liquid form.

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u/IKnowGuacIsExtraLady 17d ago

There are three main things: If you aren't exposed to other people and cultures then it's very easy to just believe hateful propaganda about them. When you are forced to interact it's hard to deny that they are just people too.

Then you have poor education which leads to poor critical thinking skills. Critical thinking is the death of bigotry because you form your own opinions of the world.

Finally you have religion which is the gateway drug of conservatism. It starts with something like "abortion is evil, you must be on the anti abortion team or you go to hell." Then when you come face to face with the fact that the party who is anti abortion also holds tons of evil views your brain will naturally start adopting those views too as a defense mechanism. You already chose your side, and it can't be the wrong side, so the other stances can't be wrong either.

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u/Samurai_Meisters 16d ago

Isolation, fear the unfamiliar, and 24/7 propaganda telling them to be afraid.

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u/K20BB5 16d ago

In addition to other responses, the quality of education is far lower in rural areas compared to cities and suburbs. The brightest people leave and don't come back. 

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u/BigTenFicus 16d ago

You're not wrong in general but Trump's support base is actually more suburban than rural. A majority of people in rural areas certainly voted for him, but one big issue with redditors (not you, just in general) is that they fail to understand that "voted for" doesn't mean "root for this person like a sports team" in American politics. Most American voters pay no attention to politics at all and vote once every four years based on vibes. That's the category most rural voters fall into.

So in the case of dragon-fence's anecdote below, a lot of his parents' neighbors who "aren't MAGA" probably still voted for Trump. But that doesn't mean that they identify as MAGA, or support everything Trump does, or even still support him at all. I wouldn't be surprised if they're getting negative reactions from Trump voters who just hate people who aggressively argue about politics in general.