A majority of Republican voters say they care more about ending “woke” ideologies in schools and businesses than fighting cuts to Social Security and Medicare benefits, according to a new poll.
About 55% of voters said they care more about eliminating woke policies compared to just 27% who said they wanted to prioritize protecting the entitlement programs from budget cuts, according to a recent Wall Street Journal poll. Roughly 16% say they care about the two issues equally, 1% said neither issue was the most important, and another 2% were unsure.
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However, a majority of voters (49%) said they would rather support a candidate who pledges to preserve Medicare and Social Security benefits rather than make budget cuts, the poll showed.
That sentiment could play a big role in the GOP presidential primary as former President Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis begin to break from each other on the two policy issues.
Trump has sought to make the senior citizen programs a major policy dispute in his 2024 campaign, playing into a debate on Capitol Hill as President Joe Biden and Republicans spar over Social Security and Medicare benefits as they negotiate budget cuts.
Trump has used those talking points to ramp up attacks against DeSantis in recent weeks, hitting out against the Florida governor for his past support to amend Social Security and Medicare benefits to cut costs. The former president’s campaign released a series of attack ads last month, targeting DeSantis for voting “three separate times to cut Social Security.”
Those attacks centered on DeSantis's support of three budget resolutions in 2013, 2014, and 2015 that called for raising the retirement age and slowing down spending rates. However, those attacks have been deemed "misleading" by the independent fact-checker PolitiFact, which noted that "even if they had passed, nonbinding resolutions alone do not change law, and therefore don’t cut any seniors’ benefits.”
Meanwhile, DeSantis has focused much of his campaign on cultural issues in education and the workplace — something that could boost his standing among GOP voters, according to the poll.
DeSantis signed a law last year banning schools from teaching about gender identity and sexuality in elementary schools, which was later extended to also apply to middle and high schools. The Florida governor also signed the “Stop WOKE” Act that bans training materials in classrooms and businesses that could make participants feel uncomfortable over their race. That bill has been temporarily blocked due to legal challenges.
Although that campaign focus could boost DeSantis’s standing among voters, the Florida governor must grapple with dwindling poll numbers that trail far behind Trump. More than half (51%) of Republican voters say they’d back Trump compared to just 38% who said they’d vote for DeSantis, giving the former president a substantial lead over his closest rival, according to the poll.
DeSantis has not yet announced whether he intends to run for president, but the polling comes as the Florida governor has struggled to establish a national standing that can compete with Trump’s influence. After his historic win in the midterm elections, many Republicans began looking to DeSantis as the best choice to replace Trump as their party’s nominee.
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Since then, Republicans have seemed to turn the corner and are returning to Trump’s corner — with a growing number of GOP lawmakers endorsing the former president for the GOP nomination.
The Wall Street Journal poll surveyed 600 likely Republican primary voters between April 11-17 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.