“Woke.” You keep using that word, but I don’t think it means what you think it means.
A new survey shows that while most Americans think they know what “woke” means, they don’t actually have a firm grasp of the concept behind the term. I’d argue that the definition in my forthcoming book, “The Woketopus: The Dark Money Cabal Manipulating the Federal Government,” best encapsulates the real meaning and that most Americans do not support woke policies.
But what do Americans think?
Scott Rasmussen’s RMG Research surveyed 1,000 registered voters online last week, weighting the sample to make it more representative of Americans as a whole. The survey’s margin of error is plus-or-minus 3.1 percentage points.
Most respondents (77%) said they know what it means to be woke, and 41% of those who say they know what it means to be woke also identified themselves as woke. Half of those who said they know also said they don’t identify as woke (50%).
Self-identified Democrats (63%) proved more likely to call themselves woke than independents (43%) or Republicans (24%), while Republicans (72%) proved more likely to say they were not woke than independents (38%) and Democrats (25%).
When asked if they would approve of a woke political candidate, more respondents said they would have a favorable view (42%) than an unfavorable one (38%), but many said they were unsure (21%). Those who identified as woke unsurprisingly proved more likely to prefer a woke candidate (81%). Democrats (60%) proved more likely to say they would favor a woke candidate, while Republicans proved more likely to view a woke candidate unfavorably (61%), and independents were split between favoring (40%) and not favoring (32%) such a candidate.
Respondents did not fully align with the views of critical race theory (a lens that interprets America as institutionally racist, with black people oppressed and white people oppressors), though they did agree that America has systemic racism.
Most respondents said the United States was founded on “the ideals of freedom, equality, and self-governance” (75%), rather than on “slavery, oppression, and racism” (20%). Even most of those who called themselves woke agreed that America had a noble founding (62%), although the self-identified woke proved more likely to say America was founded on slavery (32%).
Respondents proved split on whether they thought a woke person would say America was founded on ideals (45%) or slavery (44%).
Most Republicans (87%), independents (66%), and Democrats (64%) said America was founded on ideals,........