The Divisive World of MAGA
The History of MAGA
“Make America Great Again” (MAGA) is a campaign slogan used in American politics. It was popularised by Donald Trump in his 2016 presidential campaign. Democratic pollster Douglas Schoen has called Trump’s use of the phrase as “probably the most resonant campaign slogan in recent history” (Baier, 2016).
Interest in MAGA over time
The use of #maga increases during important events in Trump’s presidency (Figure 1). There were seven noticeable spikes in interest between 19/07/2015 and 5/01/2020 (Table 1).
MAGA Usage on Twitter
Trump attributed his victory to social media when he tweeted, “I won the 2016 election with interviews, speeches, and social media.” (Donald Trump, 2017)
According to RiteTag (2020), the estimated hourly statistics for #maga on Twitter alone include: 679 unique tweets, 4.1m hashtag exposure, and 742 retweets (Figure 2). This makes #maga a highly influential hashtag.
The People using MAGA on Twitter
The slogan has seen widespread use by those who support and oppose the presidency of Donald Trump. To find out what type of people use #maga, 10,000 tweets using the hashtag between 04–05/12/2019 were collected. The 75 most common keywords that users had in their twitter bio were found (Figure 3). This shows us what topics are important to people using #maga.
The most popular keywords are things common to Trump supporters (Image 3). However, one keyword used by people who strongly oppose Trump’s presidency was found among the top 75 keywords (Image 4). ‘Resist’ refers to resisting Trump’s presidency.
Values of Trump Supporters
By categorising these keywords, we found common values that Trump Supporters share (Figure 4).
1. Republicans on Twitter show their support for Trump by putting his campaign slogans #Trump2020, #MAGA, #KAG, and #KAG2020 in their bio.
2. They demonstrate their patriotism through keywords Patriot, Proud, American, and Americafirst.
3. They demonstrate their religious beliefs through keywords Christian, Conservative, Pro-life, and Jesus.
4. Trump supporters support the military. Many appear to be retired Veterans or have military connections in their family.
5. They also believe they have the constitutional right to bear arms and show their support for the NRA in their bio.
6. They have strong family values, as shown by keywords found in their bios such as father, wife, family and married.
7. However, they are anti-immigration, represented by the keyword Buildthewall in their bio.
8. Lastly, they are anti-democrat as shown by keywords such as Walkaway, Draintheswamp, QAnon, and wwg1wga.
Most of these views are considered problematic by people who are opposed to Donald Trump.
Republicans VS Democrats
The presidency of Donald Trump has divided the country making American politics hyper-partisan (Abeshouse, 2019).
“The parties have divided over fundamental visions of the national character. The Republican party basically sees the true national identity of America as in the past, a time when America was a white, Christian nation. It’s a traditionalist vision. And then we have another party, Democratic party, that has a very different vision of American. It’s a more secular place, it’s more progressive and celebrates diversity.” — Lee Drutman, New America (Abeshouse, 2019)
Democrats have opposing viewpoints regarding immigration, religion and, gun rights which is where the parties clash as shown in Figure 5 (Diffen, 2020).
This clash over values has led to the sorting of the parties along geographic lines (Figure 6). Support for Trump lies in the 2,300 counties that make up small-town and rural US whereas Democrats tend to find their support in the cities (Abeshouse, 2019).
So, what is MAGA?
The slogan has become much more than a slogan. It represents the views and values of Trump supporters. It is white, Christian, traditionalist. It is anti-abortion, anti-immigration, anti-gun-control. It represents a divided country, divided over fundamental visions of the national character. It has divided a country into blue and red. Traditional and progressive. It has been adopted by the far-right, racists, and terrorists (Wright, 2019). It is a hashtag that carries a lot of weight and hidden meaning.
References
Information:
Abeshouse, B. (2019). Why Trump’s America is more divided than ever. Aljazeera.com. Retrieved 13 January 2020, from https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/trump-america-divided-190805093010244.html
Baier, B. (2016). Donald Trump saw what politicians ignored. And then he disrupted American politics. Retrieved 13 January 2020, from https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/donald-trump-saw-what-politicians-ignored-and-then-he-disrupted-american-politics
Diffen. (2020). Democrat vs Republican — Difference and Comparison | Diffen. (2020). Diffen.com. Retrieved 13 January 2020, from https://www.diffen.com/difference/Democrat_vs_Republican
Wright, J. (2019). How MAGA Hats Became Synonymous with Hate. (2019). Retrieved 16 January 2020, from https://www.harpersbazaar.com/culture/politics/a26099971/maga-hat-hate-jussie-smollet-tennessean-explained/
Images:
Image 1: Jae C. Hong/AP Images President Donald Trump sports a Make America Great Again hat.
Image 2, 3, 4: Screenshots of tweets from Twitter
Data:
Table 1: Noticeable Spikes in Interest of #maga. Why? Retrieved 13 January 2020, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_Donald_Trump_presidency
Figure 1: Google Trends: Interest over Time for ‘Make America Great Again’ in the United States of America. Retrieved 13 January 2020, from https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=maga&geo=US
Figure 2: RiteTag: #maga Twitter Hashtag Analytics. Retrieved 13 January 2020, from https://ritetag.com/hashtag-stats/maga
Figure 3, 4, 5. Based on Netlytic Data. Retrieved between 04–05/12/2019, from Twitter, by me, via Netlytic.
Figure 6: Summary of results of the 2004, 2008, 2012 and 2016 presidential elections per state. Retrieved 13 January 2020, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_states_and_blue_states
Visuals:
Made using Infogram, WordArt, MindMup, and Microsoft Word/Excel.